Selling house to move across country. Next move?

[Nathan Recchia]

Hey all, 

So my wife and I bought a house in Chattanooga in May 2016 for $191k and still owe $186k. Have put a lot of work into it, new flooring and paint throughout, got rid of the popcorn ceiling and did the flat painted ceiling, new interior door handles and stuff like that, updated bathrooms and nice open floor plan, and totally redid the exterior and increased the curb appeal ten-told. A house about 4 doors up just went up for sale for $240k, same size but not updated. I think we can sell our house in the $265k range for sure. 

So we just decided that we are leaving Chattanooga and moving to Denver for a few years so I can go to school there. I was originally thinking that we could rent our house out and start like that, but we have a pool and I really really don't want to rent a house with a pool. So we are thinking that we will sell and take the money that we make on it and buy a multi-family. Denver is a lot more expensive than Chattanooga so we are wondering about trying to invest long-distance and buy in Chattanooga or try to invest in Denver when we move. 

Any advice would be very helpful. 

PS. We plan on renting in Denver for ourselves and using most of the money we make on our house here to start RE investing for our future. We both have goals of leaving our careers as soon as we can to do this full-time in several years and keep growing it from there. But we have the first one coming up and hopefully about $75k to work with. 

Thanks.