I lost my job too! Is my portfolio big enough to take the leap?

[Amit Kal]

Pardon me in advance that this is a bit long-winded, but you can get a "too long; didn't read" summary down at the bottom. So I've been working 18 years now. All of those years were in fairly well jobs, but it is here in New York City, so my living costs were definitely higher. Two weeks ago the company I was working for the past three years had major layoffs and I was affected. I'm getting a decent severance package so I have about six months to figure things out. I've been investing in real estate for the past six years not including my primary residence. I'm also married and have two kids and no consumer debt. Just something to think about because the kids obviously are not cheap. Wife is a teacher so she is not killing it by any means. My portion of our monthly expenses are about $7000. This includes the nanny who we pay about $2000/month all in (food, train fare, etc). That's probably the one expense I can easily cut if I had to become a stay at home dad. But if I become a stay at home it would severely limit my options as well. So while I am enjoying this time off, I am going to get my real estate license within the next 45 days. I am also closing on a duplex, all-cash (in Nashville), and including repairs it will cost me $190k and bring in $2100/month rents (net monthly cash-flow of $1200). I'll add my sister to this deed, and hoping to refinance back out my money once the seasoning period is over which will drop the monthly cash-flows to ($400). I also own a six unit building in NYC (purchased in 2011), now worth maybe $1.5m, $250k mortgage left and brings in about $9k in gross rents. The ROI on this building might not be the best but it is in New York City and my mom lives there so she doesn't pay rent; selling this one is not option. I am also 50% owner on 8 other units in Nashville which bring in about $10k/month in gross rents. Each of these were purchased with 20-30% down and were bought over the last 2 years. As you can see, despite having a full-time job, I really tried to ramp up my real estate investing over the last several years. I probably have about $1.5 million worth of equity in my real estate investments, not including my primary residence since that does not bring in any income. These real estate investments probably kick off about $3k-$4k a month in net cash-flow EBITDA. So if I don't go back to a full-time professional job, what should I do? At this point I am in a favorable position of having a track record and quite a number of folks that are eager to invest alongside me. This gives me the opportunity to continue getting conventional loans by partnering up with folks that have W2 jobs and low debt to income. I probably have about $200k to allocate to additional deals if I have no other income coming in, which gives me runway for another 2-4 deals at 25% down + rehab costs. Commercial real estate interests me and I was recently involved in negotiating a 25 year lease for 30,000 ft.² at the nonprofit that I serve on the board of. I'm not as interested in the grind of residential sales/rentals. I have some contacts with big landlords in the commercial space who would probably give me a crack if I want to make go of it. So BP community, if you were in my position and at this juncture in your life, what would you do? TL;DR - got laid off. Have a accumulated $1.5 million in net real estate assets. They cash-flow about $3-$4k/month. I have monthly expenses of about $7k/month. Should I make the leap into RE or go back to a 8-6 corporate gig making six figures?