If they own an apartment building, how can they be lower middle class? Even if it's not fully paid off, unless they are upside down on the mortgage, they have wealth. And even getting a bank to approve a mortgage means you're probably not lower middle class.
Do you mean they look and act like lower middle class, because that's how they grew up?
Or do you mean the margins are very bad so they have to do all the maintenance themselves and the profit is actually very low? Why is that?
I’ve seen 8 unit apartment buildings where each unit rents for $400 a month. A few of the units are chronically behind on rent. The building is in bad need of repairs, and the owner does as much of it as he can himself. The property taxes consume about half of the rents.
In that example, the building was paid off, so the owner could use the rest of the rents on repairs and maintenance.
Another 6 unit example recently sold around here for $40,000. If I recall correctly every tenant was delinquent, so the buyer was going to have to deal with that.
Do you mean they look and act like lower middle class, because that's how they grew up?
Or do you mean the margins are very bad so they have to do all the maintenance themselves and the profit is actually very low? Why is that?