I'm going to tell you something that nobody in the real estate content space wants to say out loud: investing in real estate was a mistake for me. Not a learning experience I'm grateful for. Not a stepping stone to something better. A mistake. One that cost me money, sleep, and a significant chunk of my mental health.
I'm not saying it's a mistake for everyone. But I am saying that the version of real estate investing that gets sold to you on YouTube and TikTok is so far removed from reality that it borders on fiction. And I wish someone had told me the truth before I jumped in.
The Pitch That Got Me
You know the pitch. You've seen it a hundred times. Some guy in a fitted polo standing in front of a house that isn't his, talking about how he makes $10,000 a month in "passive income" from his rental properties. He breaks down the numbers on a whiteboard and it looks so clean. Buy the property, put a tenant in it, collect rent, pay the mortgage, pocket the difference. Easy. Passive. A wealth building machine that works while you sleep.
I was in my twenties when this pitch got its hooks in me. I was watching financial YouTube religiously, trying to figure out how to build wealth and not end up broke at sixty. Every other video was about real estate. The algorithms knew what I wanted to hear, and they served it to me on a silver platter. House hacking. BRRRR method. Cash flow. Appreciation. Equity. The vocabulary alone made me feel like I was already smart enough to do this.
So I did it.
The Reality Nobody Films
The first thing that went wrong was the inspection. Or rather, the things the inspection missed. I've had bad inspections bite me in the ass more than once now, and the first time was a masterclass in how quickly "good deal" turns into "money pit." Issues that should have been caught weren't. Problems that were flagged as minor turned out to be anything but. And by the time you discover this stuff, you've already closed. The house is yours. The problems are yours. The bills are yours.
Then came the tenants. Finding good tenants is a skill that takes years to develop, and I didn't have years. I had a vacant property bleeding mortgage payments every month it sat empty. So I filled it. And the person who looked fine on paper turned into a nightmare in practice. Late payments. Property damage. The kind of phone calls at 10 PM that make you question every decision that led you to this moment.
And the property management company I hired to make it all "passive"? They charged me their percentage every single month while doing the absolute minimum. Problems got worse under their watch because addressing problems costs money and ignoring them doesn't. At least not in the short term. In the long term, ignoring a small plumbing issue turns into a $4,000 repair that somehow still ends up being your problem even though you're paying someone to manage the damn property.
The Math They Don't Show You
Here's what the YouTube guys leave out of their whiteboard breakdowns. They don't talk about the months of vacancy between tenants. They don't talk about the capital expenditure reserves you need to maintain for when the roof goes or the HVAC dies. They don't talk about the $200 a month in landscaping and pest control and random maintenance that slowly erodes your "cash flow" until you're barely breaking even.
They definitely don't talk about the emotional cost. The stress of being responsible for a property that someone else lives in. The 2 AM water heater failure. The tenant who stops paying and you have to navigate an eviction process that takes months and costs thousands. The constant, gnawing awareness that your "investment" could turn into a financial sinkhole at any moment.
When I actually sat down and calculated my real returns after accounting for all of this, after the repairs and the vacancy and the management fees and the time I spent dealing with problems, I would have been better off putting that money in an index fund and forgetting about it. And I wouldn't have gotten a single 10 PM phone call about a backed up toilet.
The Kind of Person You Need to Be
Real estate investing isn't just a financial decision. It's a lifestyle decision. And the kind of person who thrives at it is very specific.
You need to be someone who genuinely doesn't mind dealing with problems. Not someone who tolerates problems. Someone who almost enjoys the puzzle of fixing things, managing people, and navigating bureaucracy. You need to be handy or have a deep network of reliable, affordable tradespeople. Not a list you found on Google. Actual relationships with people you trust who will show up when shit breaks at inconvenient times.
You need a stomach for risk that goes beyond what the spreadsheet shows. You need to be emotionally detached enough to make hard decisions about tenants without losing sleep. You need cash reserves that go well beyond the down payment and the first few months of mortgage, because real estate will surprise you with expenses and never in the good way.
I am not that person. I didn't know that going in because nobody asked me to honestly evaluate whether I was built for this. Every piece of content I consumed assumed that anyone could do it. Just follow the steps. Just run the numbers. The numbers don't account for who you are.
What I Want You to Take From This
I'm not telling you to never invest in real estate. There are people who do it well, who are built for it, who genuinely enjoy the work and have the temperament for the chaos. Those people exist and they do very well.
What I am telling you is this: if your primary exposure to real estate investing is YouTube videos and social media posts from people who are also selling you courses, you do not have enough information to make this decision. You are seeing a highlight reel. You are not seeing the full picture.
Before you buy an investment property, talk to actual landlords. Not the ones on camera. The ones in your life, if you know any. Ask them about their worst month. Ask them what surprised them. Ask them if they'd do it again knowing what they know now. And then sit with those answers honestly and ask yourself whether you're really the kind of person who can handle what they described.
Because the worst financial mistakes aren't the ones that lose you money. They're the ones that cost you peace.
And nobody on YouTube is going to tell you that.