Need advice whether to Refi or sell existing property

[Andrew McManus]

Hey everyone!

I am looking to raise some more capital to invest in more property and I need some advice from some of you veterans since I am really new at this. I owned a home in CA that I lived in for 15 years and I then moved to Colorado and bought a home here that I live in. I rented the house in CA when I moved and now it cashflows around $175/month. The mortgage balance is $173,000 and it has been appraised at $394,000. To utilize the equity from that house on new units, would it be smart to sell it and use the profit instead of doing a refi and pulling out the cash? The cashflow is ok now, but if I refi to a higher amount and pull 125-140k out, the cashflow will be negative. I realistically can't rent the house for more than $1,800/month. It may be obvious to some of you what the plan would be, but not to a newbie like me. Is a HELOC an option for something like this? If you were in this situation, what would you do?

Thanks in advance

Andrew