Should I sale or rent - Houston

[Joe Zarate]

Hey everyone,

We’ve grown out our current home and are under contract on a new more spacious home. My current home would rent for about 1900-2000, but my mortgage is 1850 a month (15 year loan @2.75). There wouldn’t be much cash flow if I rent but it’s a good house and i think with home pricing on the decline it may be best to hold onto it. If I sold I’d probably get 255k and owe 155k.

What do you guys think??

[Travis Timmons]

I'll second @Jacob St. Martin - what's the opportunity cost? If you had 100k cash, would you use that money to buy your current house as a rental? If the answer is no, then find a better and more profitable property to deploy that capital. If you won't buy anything with that cash, then, yeah, it is better to keep it as a rental than to let cash sit in your bank account. 

You also have to take into account that we live in reality and there are real transaction and closing costs associated with selling a home. I'm not sure if you mean $100k walk away money or $100k in on paper equity.