Rent Vs Sell, need advice

[Greg Barnes]

Hello All,
I'm getting hit hard by the "slowdown" in Westchester, NY.

I've owned my home for almost 8 years now. I bought it for $524,000 with a $417,000 loan at the end of 2010. I have a $3300 mortgage payment that's about $800 principle, $1250 tax and $1250 interest a month.  I put $100k into it since I bought it. I was planning on selling my house for around $700k - $750k but now the market is... well slowing down. I hit this head on cluelessly buying a more expensive house that I overpaid for, but what's done is done. :(

I'm looking at realistically selling my place for $650,000 and about breaking even or renting it out for about $4500 a month.  I researched like crazy over the last 2 days and after all income, costs, taxes including tax benefits, maintenance, vacancy costs, broker fee etc, I expect to get about $200 net income a month for the place. My assessment is like 20% house value and 80% land(!) cause the house is so small and the land so expensive in Westchester county.

So does it make sense to just rent it out every year having someone else "pay" for the house? This is as opposed to leaving it sit empty while I keep trying to sell it. Or just drop the price and shoot for a $650,000 take. I suppose a lot of that is a personal decision, but I don't know if i'm sitting on a "good rental" since I've locked in a lower tax assessment then usual for my town (believe it or not) and 8 years into principle in the mortgage, or if this is a "losing deal" vs the cash I should get. Thanks,

-Stressed in Westchester 

[Alan Grobmeier]

@Greg Barnes, easy answer:  sell.   You are towards the top of a real estate market with over 200k in equity.  Another way to look at it:  would you pay 200k for $200 a month positive cash flow? In some, very rare case, the answer might be yes.  But most of the time it’s ‘NO’ (hell no).