My brother owns 14 apts in Amsterdam bought from 2012-2018 with rental yields from 10-20%. His Dutch property mgr handles almost everything and he has plenty of time for his kids. The valuation on the earlier apts is double what he paid (70k euros + 30k renovation cost) and he rents them at 1100-1400 euros/month.

We bought apts in Riga, Latvia in 1998 and 2002 when the price per square meter was 1/10 to 1/3 what it is now. You could buy a 140 m2 apt for the price of a large car and renovate for the same cost. We rented them out at 15-20% rental yields to western diplomats and other western tenants. Everybody was terrified to invest in a former Soviet republic--be greedy when others are fearful. Communism was a war on property and it always pays to buy just after the end of a war--think Paris or Milan in 1948.

That said, I'd never buy real estate now. It's too much of a contact sport; like investment rugby. With REITs you're in with 3 clicks and out with 3 clicks and they're less correlated to the financial markets, and triple net REITs have leases with inflation escalators and nice dividends.