@Jacob Dalton, I'm going to have to agree with Jonathan Klemm (sorry, couldn't tag you) & @Brie Schmidt -- you can definitely be a successful landlord in Chicago with the right team in place.  1000's of investors do it every day. 

Even completely self-serve laundromats require daily cleaning and light maintenance.As far as time costs, expect to spend time each week troubleshooting equipment issues, routine maintenance, cleaning, and handling customer issues.

True, I am 100% with you on that.The point here is, when you analyze, you do based on what you know now (what is known as a fact today) and on what is highly likely to happened (again from today) and to accept the fact that things might change tommrow.Life happened every day, that’s why  we need to stay firm with our direction but flexible with our approach.having lived through the HORRORS of those years fully engrossed in the industry almost nationwide... it was regional on who did well and who had troubles.. no question well positioned landlords in Portland for instance no issue.. 

I've been "Retired" for 7 years since 55 and have loved every day, seven days a week doing Self Storage. 

2019 Goals: My last year in College- $10K in savings (Not Accomplished)- All A's (Not Accomplished)- Church every Sunday (Not Accomplished)- Read Bible every morning (Not Accomplished)- Read 20 minutes every day (Accomplished)- Go to Chilis 11 times only (Accomplished.

So I decided to go to my listing every day and change little things (upload a new picture, switch the order of the pictures, change the title of the property, add more or different info in the about section and edit price) The next day, we went from 0 bookings in January to 71% occupancy! 

My goal is 25 doors in 5 years, my struggle right now is deciding to either go back to work and save up money to continue or come up with a way to leverage financing to stay afloat myself and stick with it, waking up everyday 100% dedicated to my real estate. 

I also found that if you pay people cash every day it spurs them to return more reliably. 

Every day I receive calls from out of state investors who paid far too much for their property in my opinion and it always is because they trusted others too much instead of performing their own research.

It’s not every day that accusations of rent manipulation make headlines, and I wanted to understand how this impacts the millions of Americans struggling with housing costs.