To be or not to be . . . . . a Landlord
How much of your personal time will be required to manage the rental property?
Not much. Once you get some "handyman" type contacts that you can trust, it's mostly a case of just making the occasional phone call to someone to nip up to the house and fix a window, or whatever other remedial work is due. Then you've also got to keep an eye on the mortgages to ensure that you're getting the best rates available.
I agree with Landlord1 in this case, however - it's a lifestyle choice, and it really depends on your personality. With a 15/20 year timeframe, it's unlikely (but not impossible) that a property investment even in today's market will make a loss. There's no telling where the property market will go, but on the balance we're unlikely to see the 15%-style of capital appreciation we've seen in the past. But who knows.
More important would be to ask yourself if you want to be a landlord? An equity based investment is not "as safe as houses", but on the other hand a bond or stock will never:
* Ring you up at three in the morning to complain about the other tenants.
* Deal drugs in your property, resulting in a friendly visit from the Gardai.
* Use your newly fitted kitchen cabinets for firewood during the long cold winter.
* Refuse to pay the rent for 4 months and then quit the country, leaving a filthy house and a personal "present" strategically placed in the hall for you to clean up.
* Threaten you with violence for wanting to collect the rent.
* Leave rice boiling in a pot for 8 hours and burn your house down.
If you're the kind of person who can compartmentalise these incidents (and believe me they do happen) then by all means, if the sums work out, you should invest. If incidents such as these would trouble your sleep, and you'd need to have a neck as thick as a Mayo Flynn for them not too, then you should consider other investments also.
Good luck in either case, just don't go into property investment thinking that it's always plain sailing . . .
-- James