You usually make money when you sell it or when your mortgage is paid, otherwise you're likely breaking even in the meantime if you account for everything you had to spend for your property from the date of purchase.

What you can do though is use your equity to buy more and more of them so on paper you might be worth millions but truth is you're likely still working a regular job until you reach a certain point where you've got units that are paid for.

That's my experience from dating a girl who owned four 3 units buildings with her mother, they had to live in one and both had to keep working to pay for their own stuff... But I agree that when it's an investment company it's another level where you make a shit ton of profit.

A friend of mine made the calculation the other day and over 25 years buying a duplex would make him be 1m dollars poorer than continuing to rent and putting the surplus he would have paid for the mortgage in an index fund, even even taking into consideration that one unit would be rented...