Should I Sell or Continue Renting?

[Jason Gray]

Hi! I'm new to BP. I stumbled across the podcast while renovating my single-family rental unit, which was actually perfect timing. I think I know what I'm going to do with this rental (owned it 15 years) but I'd love to hear your thoughts about what you would do if you were in my situation. So here's the scoop. My wife and I bought the property 15 years ago when we were both working overseas and our employer was paying our mortgage, so we thought "why not?". We've since resigned our positions and live in a different state than the rental. Our tenant of 8 years bailed on us without any notice in April so now I'm left with an outdated empty house that no one will rent in its current condition. My original thought was to fix it up and rent it out again, but the neighbors (literally next door) recently put their house on the market and it sold in 2 days at a price MUCH higher that I thought it would be worth...we're talking $30,000 higher. My immediate thought was wow, I could SELL this house and start investing in Ohio, where I currently live. That would be much easier to manage. But after listening to some of the BP podcasts, I'm reversing course and considering the Brrrr method. We already Bought the house15 years ago. It's currently under Renovation by yours truly. We've had tenants and can get another one easily so there's the Rent part. Now all we would have to do is Refinance and THEN we could "Repeat" in Ohio and end up with our 2nd rental, rather than selling our current property and starting over. At the moment, this makes so much sense to me but I would love to hear opinions of others who have been in this situation or a similar situation. As a side note, there is about $80,000 in equity in the unit presently, and the new rental rate would create a cash flow of $600-$700/mo.