You're absolutely right. Give me all your money that you've made in the past decade and I'll keep it safe in this glass jar for you. I'll add 1% return for the chance to house a family. Now, if they want, they can take a few coins out of it on a daily basis. Also any of the usual things like orange president, fire, wind, water, heart, captain planet! can come and smash that bottle.
Wanna be a landlord because it sounds like free passive income? No! Don't! Its hard work and high risk. Don't. If you got millions and someone else can take care of it, sure (slum lords). And so that's the reason why renting is expensive. Someone has his or her whole life savings spent on that house and anything you do to it will poke directly into that. It's like a half complete transaction. The small time extra home landlord puts everything they got on a big bet that they can sell later for higher or they can make more than the bank will pay them monthly. Somewhere along the actual source of money is the renter. The bank doesn't make money, it converts labor into money. The landlord (mom and pops) takes on all the risk including maintenance and total loss.
Now think of Netflix. You pay them monthly, they stream movies to you. The movies are paid and made. They don't have any risk other than you stopping payment. That's passive income. If they stop and go bankrupt, you don't loose your home. The Bank's still siphon the money in the end, but you're not directly affected by how much. You simply pay if you want to. With a mortgage or rent, you got no choice because you need a place to live. As a landlord you got your investment down and will lose all of it...remember, its 10 years of your life. Sure its already money. You already worked 10 years. Imagine if that was not the case. OK so I work one month to make 1000. I pay the bank 1005, I charge you 1006 and make 1 from you. In turn you apply 0.50 cents of damage to the house. But also the house increases $2 in equity. This goes on for 50 years. I get my investment back as the fully paid house. The renter gets nothing. The renter can go rent elsewhere once they destroyed enough of the house. You as the landlord cannot do that. If you sell you will incurred losses to fixing and selling. And your original 10 years of labor is in that house. You can't get out of the deal. That's definetly not fun. And where's my mortgage says the bank. Banks and big landlords are the evil.