Hello everyone! Keep or sell? A 500k+ opportunity

[Oscar Toledo]

Hi everyone, first post here. Just wanted to get some opinions on where to go...

My wife and I bought a house in Austin, tx, where we live, in dec 2011 for 375k. It has 2 houses on one lot, both huge in size, 2200 and 3500 sf, on a 50000 sq ft lot. These houses required major renos and we are about 90% done with our house, 100% done with the reno on the 2nd house, now rented for 2000/mo. The rent on the second house covers most of our mortgage so I pay less than 1k per month to live in our huge, remodeled house in perhaps the best public schools in the state. Our kids are just starting school so this is key for us. 

My question is this.... I'm told that I can get 900k+ for our house, which seems to fall in line with some the the recent comps in the area. I'd love to flip the house and cash it all in for a huge bump in our retirement/real estate investment fund, but we like the house and the neighborhood. Not our first choice in neighborhoods, but the schools are top notch and it's a very safe and comfortable place to live. We never planned on flipping, but it's difficult to ignore the opportunity, especially since it would be just about all tax free cash.

Anyway, the other option is a equity loan to buy some investment property, which I may try, but we are purchasing some commercial property for our business and I think this large comm property loan will drastically affect our debt/income ratio and our ability to take an equity loan on our house. Difficult to explain why, but the comm property loan must be in our names, not our company's.

What would you do? 

[Lynn Currie]

@Oscar Toledo 

Another option, if the deed restrictions allow, is to build/renovate the second house, draw up condo docs, and sell off the other house without subdividing the lot. 

It sounds like you're in a subdivision (possibly in Eanes?) so run all the docs by your lawyer before deciding to do it this way AND make sure that, in that area, you won't run into any problems with the city for doing this. In Austin, the condo docs don't involve the city, but do get filed with the county because one taxable entity (house/land combo) is divided into two.