But at the end of it you get a free house for hardly any labour. Yes you have to do a bit now and again but it's hardly a full time job that your tenants have to do to cover your mortgage.

I never understand why you guys are doing it if you don't gain. You are doing it because it is easy money, an easy way to extract labour.

What are you expecting anyway in terms of an ongoing income stream from this endeavor? It's very low skill, to borrow you need a pulse and a job. To administer you need basic numeracy. Hardly any labour required, certainly not skilled. Sounds like minimum wage for the basic admin required, so what, a few hours a month?

The only "value" here is the ability to borrow to exert monopoly control over other wage earners in order to force them to give you a portion of their labour. That is the main ingredient in the majority of cases. Yes we need a rental sector but as I said it's low skill and the rewards should reflect this instead of dividing society into have and have-nots.

The rewards roughly do reflect this. Ordinary investing isn't clearly better or worse than investing in property. The problem is that ordinary investing requires many years of self discipline while paying a mortgage has the bank holding a stick over you to keep you from wasting your income on lattes and holidays.

"investing"? What are people who take an existing home to restrict supply, then rent it back out, "investing" in? Extorting more like.

Disipline paying they mortgage! Is that a skill now, taking $1500 from a worker, trousering $300 then handing the rest to a bank.

You are the debt collectors for the banks. Distributed extortion. No skill there yet the rewards for parasites are huge.