Less is more

Work less for more money. To be honest I do not want to work for money but I like to put my money to work for me.

One path leads to more:

more apartments, more tenants, more leverage, more moving parts.

The other leads to better:

better assets, better systems, better sleep.

Most people take the first path because it looks like progress.

I didn’t.

The obsession with doors

Real estate culture has a strange fixation on door counts.

“How many units do you own?”

“How fast are you scaling?”

“When are you buying the next one?”

These questions assume that accumulation is the goal.

It isn’t.

Social media does not help. It even makes it worse. Somehow hustling and doing more and faster is idolized. How to do more and faster? What if the real question is: how to do less and slower?

Owning real estate is not a sport. There is no scoreboard. No trophy for the most keys on your keyring. The bank doesn’t care how many doors you have — only how resilient your cash flow is when something breaks. And when you are growing, applying for more loan, even the banks make you run faster.

And you always ask for more money (loan). And something always breaks.

Scaling usually means scaling problems

Adding properties doesn’t just multiply income. It multiplies:

• maintenance

• administration

• tenant risk

• decision fatigue

What people call “portfolio growth” is often just complexity growth in disguise.

If your investments require constant attention, you haven’t escaped work — you’ve just changed uniforms.

I’m not interested in building a leveraged job.

Laziness, properly defined

When I call myself a lazy landlord, I mean this as a compliment.

Laziness is refusing to do work that shouldn’t exist in the first place.

It’s designing systems that don’t need heroics.

It’s choosing assets that survive without constant supervision.

A lazy landlord doesn’t ask:

“How can I handle more?”

He asks:

“Why am I handling this at all?”

That question alone eliminates most bad investments.

Optimization beats expansion. And growth is not a virtue.

Growth is only useful if it moves you closer to something you actually want.

If growth costs:

• peace of mind

• time

• optionality

then it’s not growth. It’s debt with good marketing.

I’m not trying to impress other investors.

I’m trying to reduce friction in my life.

Real estate is just a tool for that — not an identity.

What wealth actually looks like

Real wealth isn’t loud.

It doesn’t announce itself on social media.

It doesn’t require constant optimization.

It doesn’t wake you up at night.

Wealth is the ability to ignore things.

Bad deals.

Bad tenants.

Bad advice.

It’s the freedom to say “no” without explaining yourself.

Less, but intentional

“Less is more” is not minimalism for its own sake.

It’s precision.

Fewer assets — chosen carefully.

Fewer decisions — made deliberately.

Fewer problems — by design.

Most investors never define what “enough” means, so they spend their lives chasing “next.”

Once you define enough, the rest becomes optional.

And optionality is the only metric that really matters.

It is nice to have options: to work or not to work, to run or walk, to hustle or enjoy, to buy more or to sell. To buy a house or not to buy? 

Kettu over and out.