As a Property Manager, Real Estate investing is not passive income, even if you only have one unit, you have to pay attention. You have property inspections, repairs, maintenance, and bills to pay every month. Its only passive if you hire someone else to do all of this, and if you only own one property, this cost will likely take the profitability out of it.

Real Estate Investment is a long term game, not a short term, positive cash-flow game. My first rental property $275K capital cost, netted me -127.50/month in cash-flow. you can't live on negative cash-flow. However, in 5 years I also paid down the mortgage by $35,000 due to very low interest rates, and the property value went up by $30K, so when sold I had a nice bit of cash in hand. But I had to pay income taxes on the mortgage pay-down each year because that is actually profit that you don't get to spend in your daily budget.