Sell current property to pay off debt or keep as rental?

[Jennifer White]

Hey Everyone,

My husband and I are new to real estate investing.  We currenty live in Washington state close to the military base and own our current home.  We are being stationed in Mississippi and are having to make the decision if we should sell our current home or keep it as a rental.  We’d appreciate some input in the decision.  

To give you a little more background, we live in a very hot market with houses not staying on the market longer than a couple weeks, if even that long.  If we choose to sell our house we would make about 100-120K profit.  We do have some debt to pay off with our cars and a single credit card so could use the money to pay off about 50k in debt and still have a nice nest egg and money for future investment properties.  We both have good paying jobs so if we don’t use the money to pay down the debt, I imagine we would have the debt paid off in about 1-2 years anyways.

On the otherhand, we live in a great market for rentals as well since we are close to the base and a lot of people relocating to WA.  Our house could give us about $200-400 per month.  I have to a little more research in how much we would make each month but that is a rough estimate.  We want to eventually invest in mississippi but we don’t know the area well and a lot of the area is low income so we don’t want to jump into too quickly till we know the area better.  

We would appreciate any input, thoughts, or experience in these scenarios!  Thanks in advance!

[Steve Vaughan]

I'd sell and take the tax-free gain.  No way I'm managing a PNW rental from Mississippi. Especially if you dont plan on moving back.

But I'd sell by owner in a hot market and have with my last 3.  Get to know NWMLS Form 21 and Form 17.  It's not difficult.