Do you not rent out your property? If you do, managing renters can be just as troublesome. Confrontations over slow payment or unpaid rent, property damage, snowballing utilities bills, negotiations over rental rate increases, maybe worrying about tenants sub-renting rooms to others you don't know etc.

Contracts can't help you if you get a bad tenant. Maybe you've always had good luck and have good tenants, I have experience with bad tenants before. Even though the tenants were arranged through real estate agents and have signed contracts, it doesn't really help you if they won't pay up, won't pay on time or cause problems. Sometimes even if you have decided to evict them and want to cut your loss, it can be difficult. What can you do? Call the police? Sue them? Like I said, very troublesome.

I can cite many examples. A friend's house rented out to a business owner through a real estate agent. Ended up not paying a single month's rent after paying for initial deposit. Went to the office to complain many times, business owner even wrote postdated cheques that bounced, ended up running way with six months rent in arrears. One house rented out to a company, they ended up filling it with many illegal immigrant workers, caused many problems and complaints from neighbours etc. My father in law has a shop office that keeps changing tenants. A new tenant comes in, rents for 4 to 6 months, the business fails and then runs away. He keeps complaining that the real estate agent earns more from the property than he does.

Yes, these problems can be solved but they take time and effort. I only mean to say that it is not true that the only downside of property investment is that it needs more initial capital. All types of investments have different risks, effort involved etc. This is why these days I prefer to invest in REITs and unit trust funds. Less troublesome, no need to constantly follow up on tenants, trouble with maintenance and utilities, etc. Note: I currently have three properties rented out: a condo, a low-cost flat and a house in Shah Alam. But my investments in stocks either directly or through unit trust funds still exceed the value of my property investments.