Unless you have cash, the failure scenario in case of buying is extremely nasty. Also, there's a lot of administrative and maintenance related work that, in case of rented, is not my problem anymore.
There are quite a few areas of expertise required to manage a property, and if you don't have them yet it can cost you (both in money and time).
Sure, you can hire someone else to do repairs. But how will you know what repairs are required (do you ask the roofer if this is a patch job, or if a new roof is needed)? How do you know what a given repair or renovation should reasonably cost? How do you find trustworthy contractors? The ones everyone recommends will be busy through next year, more or less, and the unknowns are exactly that.
What tasks can you reasonably do yourself (without experience) as opposed to hiring someone? I.e., shower grout, replacing a light fixture, installing a dishwasher/stove, installing shelving, replacing a door lock, putting weather stripping around windows, small painting jobs, etc..
My wife & I had a few years with significantly lower income. If we had been renting, we would have rented a cheaper place for those years. But we own a house -- so we basically just spent a few years unable to afford to maintain it properly.
More recently, we now have kids and have been thinking of leaving the area entirely -- moving to a different city, or possibly leaving the country.
But to sell or rent the house, we should finish renovation/repairs first. And the selling market isn't great now, but becoming a landlord -- especially remotely -- would require a whole new set of skills.
I've learned a hell of a lot (mostly through error) over these years, but these are not all skills I have wanted to learn, or how I've wanted to spend my time; the fact of buying the house forced an awful lot of experiences after it.
If you rent, you pay someone else to handle all that. If they do a poor job, you look for a better place (and it's not fun to find a new place and move, but it's not a huge deal).
Unfortunately, every decent house i find is only available for purchase but not for rent. Seems the houses available for rent are for people that don't care too much for having a nice home. At least that's how it feels to me at the moment.
What would you advise to someone in my position?
What this means is, renting out is at least a side-business to someone, and they usually either at least somewhat care for customer experience (YMMV, of course), and either do a lot themselves, or hire people to help along if they don't.
On the other hand, while in Poland renting is common, it's treated as temporary, and most landlords only have a single place that they treat as a side income, or just a way to keep the cost of having an empty flat "for later" down. That makes the entire experience way worse — for example, contacting them is essentially an emergency measure. OTOH, they usually care less about what you do to the flat (so, they're more likely to be okay with drilling holes or painting walls into odd colors — if you rent serially, you may have only a week or less between tenants, if you just kick people out and move in yourself you probably take a full redo into account).
You can often have someone do that for you.
If they do a poor job by doing too little maintenance, your renter will let you know about it.
If they do a poor job by doing unneeded or unimportant maintenance, and/or charging you too much for the tasks they're doing, your renter will be perfectly happy... so how will you know?
Granted, it's important not to obsess about this stuff -- if they're cheating you just a little bit, it's not worth worrying about. But if you don't know what you're doing, they may be able to cheat you pretty seriously, and you won't know.
