Right path - sell, refinance or rent

[Matt Cecil]

Hi All,

I'm new to BP and REI so here's a little bit about myself. I started out a year ago on the BP forums, podcasts and reading books. I fell in love with the idea of REI so here I am. My wife and I bought our first house in August with the plan to rent.

We bought a 2bd 2ba sfh planning to turn it into a 4bd 2ba because local rents seemed to be around 1900/month sfh. Long story short I haven't had any luck with turning our den into 4th bd (can't find egress window for RO). Since the local market is still screaming hot,  we had our realtors stop by. They said with the comps our house will likely go between 250-265k. Also, we have updated the main level and the basement is finished, just outdated. Our house, I believe, has the nicest main level and is better located (of the comps).

Here are our numbers:

-House 212k purchase

-Mortage $1267 (principal, interest, taxes, etc.)

-Owe 204k

-20k rehab estimate when finished 

Do we:

1) Sell using agents (safer path since we are very new to this but most likely break even)

2) FSBO (seems ethically wrong since we reached out to previous agents but can save about 10k+)

3) Refinace (use equity for investment property)

4)Rent (I'm assuming we won't get 4bd price since its legally a 3bd)

I understand that the numbers aren't great for flip and for sure 3bd rent prices. We wanted to do this over a couple years just to make sure we didn't jump into this too fast. Well, I'm hungry and just feel like we should take advantage of the high house values.

I'm sure I forgot something, since this is the 2nd time I tried to post this. The first time I lost it all! Ugh. We have an idea of the best route for us, but wanted to reach out and make sure we exercise all options! 

Thank you so much! 

Matt