The Consensus Top Landlord Mistakes

Mistakes 2

 

There are many articles written about the most common mistakes made by landlords. Why not learn from other people’s missteps? However, the majority of these articles are written by one person which makes it difficult to tell if the mistakes were from just that one writer’s experience or from multiple sources. If multiple, how many? In what markets? Are they do-it-yourself landlords or professional property managers?

I am a big proponent of leveraging online communities and social networks when it comes to gathering actionable advice on how to be a landlord. Many of the comments posted are from real life landlords from all over the country who are sharing their stories and experiences.

One of the biggest real estate social networks is BiggerPockets. They run a forumlandlord and rental property questions, that has an active user base where there are new posts every several minutes.

A favorite thread of mine is “The Top 5 Landlord Mistakes” (you will find the thread stuck right at the top of the discussion list). This thread is a gold mine for identifying the most common landlord pitfalls with approximately 150 posts spanning 7.5 years. However, it does take a long time to read them all so I created a cliff notes version. As I read through the comments, I paid attention to:

1) the frequency that a mistake was identified AND

2) the answers with a high number of upvotes.

Similar mistakes were grouped in the same category.

 

And finally, the big unveil…here are…drum roll please…the consensus top landlord mistakes:

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