[svandamme]

personally i think Rent should cover the mortage payments on the property + maintenance overhead.

It really should not yield an income on top of that, because basically you are getting a free house (payed by somebody else) when you retire..
why charge extra for it? It just seems greedy to me.

My sister's landlord is one of those... He buys an ok3 story row house, converts it to 3 crappy appartments and charges 400 euro rent per month.
Basically he get's 1200 euro out of a low quality house on which he pays at most 800 euro mortage and upkeep for..If at all he bothers to do any upkeep.
And when he upgrades the single pane glass to double(to get the tax breaks), he even tries to raise the rent so the upgrade (which he pays with tax returns he would not have gotten)is payed off by the renters in 2 years.
Now my sister works in a protected workplace, for a reason...If i hadn't stepped in, he would have illegally gotten a double profit out of that window scheme..When he could have done the upgrade without charging her a cent more, and still make a profit.. that's greed.
That's how landlords get a bad rep.