Sell and retire, or KEEP and retire?

[Kenneth LaVoie]

Per usual, it's very rare that any of the listed categories fit my questions so I hope this is at least close.

Anyone struggling with the decision on whether to sell your rental properties or not as you get near retirement? We have had some interest.

We've had our properties for about 10 years, and sales prices would give us around a 20% or more annual return on money invested, and leave us with 25% more in money than we need for "safe withdrawal rate" of 3.5%.

But the money we have in our buildings seemingly will always outperform the money we'd put in our investments, though nothing is for sure. (i.e. our $$$ staying in buildings gives us around 10% give or take, plain cash flow, not including depreciation benefits, mortgage paydown, possible appreciation, etc.) but when we sell and put that cash in our 60/40 ish investment porfolio,

I don't want to withdraw more than 3.5% (Based on the supposed SWR of 4% wiht a little cushion).

I just find myself really "hemming and hawing" and "on the fence". On one hand, if the MARKET says SELL, you SELL, but on the other hand, these buildings are solid, have ten years of us constantly upgrading, and represent only 50% of our net worth. In other words our eggs aren't all in this basket.

We also want to be free to travel. We can do that and still "manage from the road" but it's a little more scary and units might have to sit vacant from time to time. My wife would prefer to be done with them no later than age 62 (54 now). Lots of thoughts here.

Not looking for someone to tell me what to do, just looking for different ways to look at it. As many perspectives as possible. There's always the "hire a manager" but that's one of those things that sounds so simple and great on paper that's MUCH more difficult to pull off and still make money than it sounds.

Thank you!