Is building and renting a semi-detached house reasonable as a capital investment?

But you have understood what we wrote here, haven’t you?

But leaving that aside: one should not invest much in a financial investment about which one has no knowledge. My opinion.

From an engineering perspective, most likely not a good idea. Houses have high costs, so the rent must be correspondingly high. If you happen to get even one bad tenant, the return is gone for years; this is also called concentration risk. Better find something nice for yourself and invest the rest in ETFs, classic cars, or whatever you like and know about.

How do all the others do it? They live in it for 3 or 4 years and then rent it out, afterwards they build another one..

Have you saved enough money to buy two semi-detached houses for about 500-600,000 euros? If, for example, you needed a 300,000 euro loan, you would probably pay about 500 euros in interest per month (at least at the beginning). If you could rent out the house for 1000 euros now, you would have 500 euros left to pay off the loan. So it will take quite a while until your loan is paid off. As I said, you would need to write a bit more precisely about what you plan to do.

Best regards
Sabine

The topic of renting out a semi-detached house itself was recently discussed here:

Your dream in particular

Hello people..
I have been thinking for a long time about building a semi-detached house on our property and renting out one side.. my plan was actually to live in one side for a few years and rent out the side where I live, and then build another one and do the same again.

however raises the question to a very high degree of what might have been smoked here: if I understand correctly, you want to earn so much from renting out a semi-detached house that after a few years the construction of the next semi-detached house pays for itself. Furthermore, you apparently have the impression that this brilliant concept already regularly works, and that also immediately for "everyone else":

How do all the others do it? They live in it for three or four years and then rent it out and build another one..

Your friends must all belong to the jet set if that really applies in your circles. I am not very familiar with Kashoggis and Vanderbilts, but as far as I know, it does not work like that with the Müllers, Meiers, and Schulzes.

I’m afraid you have been fed a fairy tale about the multiplication of semi-detached houses by cell division.

How do all the others do it? They live in it for 3 or 4 years and then rent it out, then build another one..

Who are "all the others"? I know enough people in the salary class €100k+, who can't do that. At most, build, live in it, sell, and build new.

From my experience, a single-family house brings almost no ongoing return. Only value increases are possible, but not guaranteed, since the house also ages.