> I'm not a fan of owning a second home as an investment property.

Don't do it. I owned a 2nd home and was a headache. You will get a call on a random tuesday from a neighbor you don't know that says "hey, I noticed you have water leaking from side of your house for the past few days". 

Good luck finding the time, energy, and money of dealing with that for your "investment". 

Own bitcoin and when you want to go on vacation sell a little and rent a nice place for a week or two and turn the keys back to the owner afterwards and let them deal with the busted pipes on a random tuesday.

Yeh, I've had bad landlords before and it's no fun.  So in that sense, owning can be a lot less risky than renting. 

But for all the reasons laid out in the article, I'm not a fan of owning a second home as an investment property.  i'd rather not deal with that hassle, and rather invest in bitcoin or stocks.

SimpleStacker

True, I'm blessed with having a great situation and excellent relationship with my landlord — so I get all kinds of perks plus avoid the kind of things you're mentioning.

denlillaapan

One of the issues around renting vs owning that always mattered more to me, but seems to get lost in these discussions, is control and stability. Renting puts you at the whims of a landlord, with protection that lasts at best a year or so; after that, they can change the contract any way they like, and while you can reject it, you have to move and find another place. Yes, you're at the whims of your bank when you own (or when you own part of a house and a mortgage, to be precise), but at least the contract there can't be broken if you can pay your vig.