What should I do with my newly paid off home?

[Kyle Nichol]

As the title states, I'm looking for ideas on what I could POTENTIALLY do with my recently paid-off SFR.

My goal is to purchase my first investment property within the next 12 months. My initial plan is/was to take all of my newly-found additional cash flow as a result of paying off the house, and simply save up for the down payment on either a rental SFR or multi-family. I've always been a "saver" so I'll have the down payment soon enough.

I do like my home, and could easily see myself living here for the rest of my life.

However, I’m also beginning to view it as a nice potential source of cash and down payments on 2-3 rental properties.

Conservatively, I’m pretty sure that it would sell for around $180k-$190k. Since I’m now an empty-nester, I am also willing to downsize to something smaller.

If I bought something in the neighborhood of $130k (or less) that would potentially leave me with $50k to play with and use for either a couple of down payments or for an outright purchase.

I should mention that I’m not really interested in house hacking since I’ve grown over the years to really like my privacy and peace and quiet.

It’s a pretty exciting time for me, and I was hoping to get some feedback and insight from the more knowledgeable folks here. Thanks.