Opinion on Selling or Renting Current Home

[Tyler Hill]

Hello everyone, 

First post. My wife and I are looking to move into a bigger home over the next year or so and I need some advice on whether or not to sell or rent out our current home. I've read the book on Rental Property Investing and crunched the numbers based on the info in this book. 

Turning our current home into a rental includes refinancing our current home at today's rate, about a 12% down payment, closing costs, costs associated with prepping for a rental, all in a 30 year loan. Our lender has already agreed to the refinance package. So here's the breakdown...

CoCROI = 5.5 %

Positive monthly cash flow of about $172

The property is in a highly desirable area and most rentals in my area have long term tenants (15+ years). We don't have any other rental properties so this would allow us to break into rental property investing, which is what we ultimately want to do. Now those numbers aren't that great but it seems like it might be difficult to find a good cash on cash return in the Portland, OR area in this sellers market. 

The question is should we sell this house and put our money into a new house instead, and purchase a different rental property in the future? Or rent this one out and have less of a down payment for a new house? In either case we are committed to investing in rental properties in the future. 

Thanks for your suggestions and expertise. This is a new thing for me so I apologize if I'm leaving something out.