Become Hard to Disappoint

Rental property rarely lets its owners down. The sums they did before buying usually do. A first time landlord tends to work out the return from a full year of rent with nothing going out, and then meets the ordinary year instead. A tenant leaves and the flat stands empty while the next one is vetted. Paint and carpets wear faster than the estimate. Rates and levies rise while the rent stays fixed for the length of the lease. Sooner or later a tenant pays late or stops paying, and recovering the unit lawfully takes time and legal fees.

None of that is bad luck. It is the normal running cost of a rental, and it only feels like betrayal when it was left out of the plan. An owner who allows for some empty months, keeps money aside for repairs between tenants and expects costs to climb faster than rent meets the same setbacks with a shrug, because they were already counted. That owner is far more likely to still hold the flat years later, when the bond is smaller and the rent has caught up with the costs, which is usually when owning a rental starts to pay.