Could you please not be a jerk in HN comments? I'm sure you can make your substantive points without that.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Ok will do, though I don't think I was being that much of a jerk here. But I do see how the comment was not nice

I agree: there are degrees, and yours was far from as bad as it gets. But still.

I bought just before the '07 crash with a 95% LTV. The value of the flat dropped 40% overnight.

4 years later when I had to move for work and family reasons, we were still in negative equity, so we had to rent it out. Fortunately we had good tenants, and the income just about covered the costs including the interest on the mortgage (which we could offset against tax, can't do that now), which was a good job as we ourselves were paying far more in rent elsewhere. Fortunatly we'd gone for an interest-only tracker mortgage, as we needed everything we were paying into savings to pay the rent on where we were actually living.

Eventually sold in 2016 for the price we paid 9 years earlier

Would you shy away from a challenge or an opportunity just because you might be bad at it or fail in some unknown way?

What I meant is that you shouldn't enter into an investment scheme and act like a victim because it blew up in your face. Nobody is going to cry over the poor, poor landlords

Ok, I agree. But your original comment just said “Maybe you shouldn’t be a landlord then”, and I foolishly responded.

yeah I edited it around the same time you replied, my bad