Selling or Renting amidst Covid-19

[Samantha Smith]

Hi everyone,

We would love some opinions on our situation. 

We just bought a new home and we were planning to rent out our first home that we have owned for the last 10 years. The value of the house has doubled since we bought it and we have renovated everything. We could net about 120k on a sale or we could net about $525/month cash flow from renting (before accounting for r/m) until the mortgage is paid off in 20 years. It's an older home but located in an up and coming area in South Florida. We would be managing it ourselves.

We wanted to take advantage of the original, low purchase price of the property and get the long term benefits and cash flow of renting. However, we won't get any tax benefits at our income level and in the current environment, we are nervous about finding a good renter, and all of the stress that would go along with it. We are considering selling now and reinvesting elsewhere instead of holding the property long term. We can afford to cover both mortgages for a while if necessary, but of course we would rather not do that. 

Any thoughts or opinions on how to proceed? What would you do?