The quietest rental in the family is my aunt in my parents' old garage

Not really my story, it's my parents'. They converted the back half of their garage into a one bedroom in 2019 because my aunt's rent went up and she couldn't cover it. Permitted, inspected, took about seven months and cost them somewhere in the $90k range, which even then was cheap and would not be cheap now.

She pays them $900. Market's more like $1,500. Nobody in my family thinks that's a mistake. She takes in the mail when they travel, she notices when the water heater makes a noise, and my mother has somebody to eat dinner with three nights a week.

The reason I bring it up in an investing forum is that the building doesn't care what it's used for. In six years there's been one repair, a wax ring on the toilet. No turnover, no listing, no screening, no vacancy. When my parents eventually sell, an appraiser is going to see a legal second unit sitting on a single family lot, and that shows up in the price.

Boring like that is what I'd like my own deals to look like. It seems like the ADU is one of the few things where uneventful is actually available, as long as you survive the seven months of construction first.