Seeking some advice from across the border!

[Alex Normand]

Hey all!

First, I would just like start off by saying that I am very glad I found this website and community. I have been reading a lot of your posts on the forum, and I appreciate how you are all helping each other out, even if you have no clue who is sitting on the other side of the screen. Very cool! Seeing all of this action going on, I figured I'd hop on the band wagon and seek your professional opinions. 

But before I start, let me give you a little bit of information about me. 

My name is Alex, I'm 25, and I currently reside in Toronto, Canada. I started being really interested in Real Estate when I was 18 years old, while watching all of those Flip That House TV shows. After ''studying'' their methods on TV, I figured it couldn't be that hard to do what those guys were doing, so went on and purchased my first condo with the little money I had when I was 20 years old. Out and all, it took me three months to flip (buy, reno, sell). I then purchased another (bigger) property with the small profit I had made from the previous deal, and flipped that property as well (took 4 months). All together I made a very small profit, about 8 000$ total after taxes (both properties combined). But I figured that I had gained some experience and learnt from some mistakes I made (un-calculated expenses, etc.) so the 8 000$ in profit was just a bonus. It's important for you to know that during that time, I was still living at my parents place, so I didn't have a lot of living expenses, which made it a lot easier financially. 

I then got a full-time job in the big city of Toronto and got to experience living on my own for the first time. Rent here is very expensive (about 1200$ Canadian for a one bedroom apartment in the downtown area). After being living here for a year and half, getting to know the city, I decided to buy a place of my own. Initially, I wanted to purchase a duplex or triplex, and house hack my way into the market, but those places go for 600k + and need a lot of repairs. Basically, impossible to finance on my own and very little cash flow possibility. 

So I bought a condo, put in about 20k in renovations, and within a couple of weeks, my place was now worth 30-35k more than the purchase price, as valued by a local realtor. In order to pay off my renovations, I decided to rent my place on Airbnb to tourists while staying at my girl friends place. From April to September, I bring in about a 300-500$ cash flow on this 1 bedroom condo (renting on Airbnb). The rest of the months are pretty quiet. If i'd rent it out to a full-time tenant, I would break-even or MAYBE make 100$ in cash flow per month. 

Here's where I need your advice. I'm currently tied into a 5 yr mortgage at 3% interest, and basically, have all my ''savings'' tied into that place. My current mortgage policy states that I can't count the equity of my current property in order to finance a new property. Condo buildings are popping up like weeds here, so my gut tells me that condo prices will hit a plateau sooner or later. 

Now I'm wondering,  should I sell this place, take the 60-70k I have in it and put that cash towards a duplex or triplex in a more suburban area, given that the property would bring in a nice cash flow, etc ? I would probably have some cash left over that I could put towards another property later on. 

OR 

Keep this property, rent it out on Airbnb 6 months out of the year (give or take 1800$ in cash flow), and to a full-time tenant during the slower seasons (low to no cash flow), try and save up the capital for another property, and hope that the condo market keeps going up? 

I also have a 40k, debt free, line of credit available for renovations, etc. 

My goal is to keep building my RE portfolio throughout the next couple of years, and be involved in RE on a full-time basis at some point. 

Let me know what your thoughts are, and sorry if the answer to my question seems obvious for some of you. Looking for some guidance! Thanks in advance!

-Alex