Continue to Rent or Sell advice needed

[Marie B.]

Hi, I am new to this forum and looking for some advice on our current situation.  We have a home in MA that ended up becoming a rental property in 2008 when our jobs brought us out of the country.  We now own a town-home in MA with another high mortgage and plan on moving to NC in about 5+ years.  Our dilemma is do we continue to rent to the people who have been there since 2010 or sell.  We do not want to hold a mortgage or Rent to Own.  Here are some of the figures.

$540-$555K-Estimated appraisal of home

$483-Purchase price in 2002 for a house built in 1996

4.75 - Interest rate

$259,860.04 - Principal Balance

$2915.55 - Monthly mortgage payment including taxes, insurance

$2920.00 - Tenant Monthly rent payment

Tenants would like to buy our home but cannot afford to purchase.  We had offered to sell it to them for $509K for a direct sale without realtor fees, no repair cost (as-is).  We need to put approximately $10-15K in house to put on market.  It's also difficult to get much more than what we are already charging for monthly rent and as you can see, we have no extra for maintenance/repairs.  

Questions

1.  Do we keep property to have tenants continue to pay down mortgage?  

2. Do we spend $10-$15K to prepare house to put on market in Spring not knowing how much it will actually sell for?  If we do sell, we will owe capital gains since it is not our primary residence.

3. Do we buy another another investment property (home) in NC (since our plan is to move there in 5+ years) to avoid capital gains?   We will then incur new closing costs, etc. and the uncertainty of how long it would take to get renters into property is a concern.

Marie