Hold or sell?!?!?

[Vincent Pierce]

I need help deciding if I should keep my primary residence and rent it out or sell it and then move into a new one, I have already done a cash out refi of 60k if we rent it we would get 150-250/ month profit not counting cap ex and if we sold we could get 5k-20k property is worth 250-280 ARV , the property has brand new roof hvac and hardwood floors with in the last year or two we will also be using va loan to buy.
ps my wife wants to sell and I want to rent it out 

[Randall Alan]

Quote from @Vincent Pierce:

I need help deciding if I should keep my primary residence and rent it out or sell it and then move into a new one, I have already done a cash out refi of 60k if we rent it we would get 150-250/ month profit not counting cap ex and if we sold we could get 5k-20k property is worth 250-280 ARV , the property has brand new roof hvac and hardwood floors with in the last year or two we will also be using va loan to buy.
ps my wife wants to sell and I want to rent it out 

@Vincent Pierce

I think you need to ask yourself, “where do I want to live?”  Neither of your scenarios are very compelling to me.  $150/month is nothing… and given your closing costs of say $16,000 if you sell, it would take 8+ years to recover that $16,000 at $150 per month.  

The $5,000-20,000 profit if you sell isn’t much to work with, especially given you would need to move back into somewhere.

If you like where you live, my vote would be to sit still and enjoy your current house. The other two options require spending money that is basically going out the door to lots of fees and expenses of exiting your current house and getting into a new one.

If you were just looking to move, that is perhaps a different story… If your house isn't working for you, for instance. If that is the case, you sell the house, pay off the HELOC, and use the $15-$20,000 to get into a new house. if you're looking for an investment angle, you might consider moving into a multifamily house, such as a duplex, where the other tenant would probably pay for your mortgage with their rental payment each month. If that were the case, you are really getting quite a bit of positive cash flow in the sense that you are not paying out for a mortgage each month. So whatever you have been paying for a mortgage would ultimately be positive cash flow to your bank account.

I wouldn’t even consider the $150 from renting your current house to actually be real cash flow in your situation. You should be putting at least that much into a maintenance reserve for a rental.  So what you are really talking about is probably going negative on cash flow if you were to try to rent it out (from what you have told us.)

All the best!

Randy