First, you can make a lot of money in real estate if you do it right but you have do either get super good deals or do a bunch of work yourself or wait 20-30 years. There's really no money in it if you pay retail prices.
It's nothing but a hassle from day 1. Even setting up auto billing for all the utilities and HOA fees, insurance and taxes. On top of that the states that I looked into don't even allow for auto debit for property taxes, so you to pay them manually lol. What a pain in the ass!
It's difficult to make a good return on investment with single families or condos, unless you get them for like 50% of their face value. After you factor in all of the expenses with owning the real estate and property manager etc, you'll be lucky to break even, unless you own them free and clear with no mortgage, then you'll be lucky to get 5-8% return
Not liquid, if you need cash in a hurry, the buyers will have you by the balls and it puts you in a horrible negotiating position.
Hiring a property manager is far from hassle free, you still have to manage them to make sure they are doing things right.
Unless you are a realtor yourself, selling the property can cost around 8%, so that takes away 8% of any appreciation that you may have received while owning it.
Amount of paperwork involved is huge.
You can likely get a similar return on investment buying into a REIT, without all of the aforementioned hassles. I plan on buying into SRET and other income producing web properties instead of buying a house again. I'm debt free for the first time in 3 years and it feels good. No mortgage, and I'm free to move about when I want to, way more freedom.
I'm not a financial adviser, plenty of people make money in real estate but they usually get lucky in one way or the other, like getting super cheap deals or holding properties for 20 years. Or they simply work their ass off and do all of the rehab, remodeling, renting and everything themselves or do tons of work to find these incredible deals.
You can't flood a stock. A stock won't tie you down to a particular location if you can't sell it.
The people that make a lot of money in real estate like Grant Cardone look at 100s of properties before buying so they are super selective, and Grant Cardone only buys multifamily. So he rents everything he personally lives in, even though he's nearly a billionaire by now. Nothing wrong with renting. I will be most likely renting a house again at some point instead of buying one.
Conclusion
Just rent and invest in other things, you'll most likely come out ahead in the end. I personally like things that print money without a lot of hassle. These include 1) dividend stocks, 2) certain niche websites 3) crypto like masternodes that pay dividends. These 3 are my sole focus from this point moving forward.