Sell a rental or take out the equity?

[Dave Hyatt]

Hi all,

Very new at this. I have a goal to replace my wife's income for health reasons with some buy and hold properties in Hershey, Hummelstown, Palmyra and possibly Harrisburg, PA.

I own a rental with that I could probably get about 230k for, great renter currently (been there for 4 years) owe about 160k on the place. Rent barely meets expenses. So in the + column, it's just a little bit of equity build up and some tax relief with depreciation. (it's a home we moved from and didn't want to sell after the market tanked)

The market is picking up there. I can take out about 25k in equity with a HELOC and with a HELOC on our primary home have enough to buy and hold or flip one property.

I'm trying to decide whether I bite the bullet and sell the place (it's about an hour from us) or take out the equity and wait for an upswing?