You would be correct if you were managing this property yourself. This would be incorrect if you have a property manager managing this property. You can work with your property manager to auto approve any house related work that is under a certain threshold. Otherwise, they will send you an invoice for you to pay at your convenience.

With that said, depending on the property manager, they will do some of the following: find tenants, place tenants, evict tenants, collect rent, find contractors/repairperson to fix issues, etc.

The property manager makes it mostly passive but probably an hour a month of work if that.

Sure, but then the property manager charges so much that it's probably not a profitable investment, or at least a much less profitable one. They typically charge a % of the rent, plus another fee for whatever activity they do- x number of dollars to visit the site, x dollars to show the property, x dollars to go to court, manage the contractors, and so on.

Now it's 'passive', sure, but no longer an 'investment'

> Now it's 'passive', sure, but no longer an 'investment'

...unless the math adds up and you're still making a profit.