Properties I've sold and why. Please add yours. Exclude flips

[Cal C.]

I wrote this up as a post on J Martin's thread NEVER sell any RE in your Life, and Get Rich!?!, but I decided it warranted a thread of its own. Please share your reasoning and regret/no regret of your property sales.

Besides the outright flips, I've sold five properties. I'm in the process of selling two more. Here is my reasoning and my regrets or lack thereof.

1) A weekly rental in Florida- Used this occasionally until I got married- wife didn't like it and I was losing money on it so I sold it for an overall small profit. 18 months later it was worth 60% more then dropped to below what I paid for it in 1999. (still no regrets selling it)

2) My personal residence outside Cambrige UK. Sold it in one day and made a nice profit. I literally did the Toyota Jump when I sold it. Property was worth another 100,000 pounds a few years later. I regret selling this one because I could have rented it out and I knew a fairly good PM.

3) Sold personal residence in Northern VA. Sold it in 17 days for a nice profit. Worth more now but not substantially so. I needed the money to buy my personal residence in Atlanta. (No regrets).

4) Sold my wife's personal residence in RI (we lived apart for a few years and I commuted to her place on the weekends.) Made a real nice profit on it because I took advantage of an overheated RE market. Currently worth substantially less than what I sold it for 10 years ago. (No Regrets)

5) Sold a real dog of a rental ATL area. I called this the house that will not be named (ala Harry Potter's villian) because it had so many problems. Worst house I've ever bought. However I bought right and still made a profit on it. (NO REGRETS!)

6) Selling a ATL area TH rental because the HOA decided to enforce a no rent covenant. Will make a nice profit but greatly regret having to sell it but no choice. (huge regret but can't keep it)

7) Selling some land on the Finger Lakes, NY. Got it for a good price, but had trouble building on it. Long story. I'm putting it on the market today. Should (I hope) profit nicely on it. (some regret since I would rather have built on it and ran a weekly rental there.)

My inclination is to keep properties as @J. Martin advocates, but sometimes I'm forced to sell and sometimes it makes sense to sell or I'm forced to sell. I do have a couple of other dog rental properties I want to dump, but they are so far under water I can't sell without taking a loss.

[Patrick L.]

In the last 7 years I've only sold two of my rentals.

The 1st was my first venture into low income neighborhoods and I accidentally bought one in a bit of a war zone. They were selling crack out of the apts across the street all evening/night (but I guess they were sleeping in the day time every time I was down there) and I couldn't find a decent tenant. Luckily I bought it right so I was able to make about $500 (and I was thrilled to not lose money) after my light rehab and both sets of closing costs and my commission to sell it. I sold it a little over 5 years ago and last year I had this same house pitched to me from a wholesaler in an email for more than double what I paid for it last time....luckily I was able to pass this time.

The 2nd was one of my rentals that was just too far away from my others. When I was starting off and didn't have any rentals I was willing to buy anywhere local if the deal was right. Well this one could be a full hour away if traffic was bad (about 30 min in no traffic) so when my business expanded it became a torn in my side for service calls and the last time it went vacant I didn't want to deal with showings so I sent my crew over there for one last cleanup and put it on the market. I made great return while I owned and more than doubled my money on the property itself so it worked out fine. I used the money to purchase a new rental closer to the rest of mine and I ended up with a nicer property in a better area that pulls in a little more rent.