Anything I can do with my existing appreciated property?

[Tyler Cruz]

Hi Everyone!

Nearly 3 years ago I finished reading nearly every article and blog posts here before finally feeling confident enough to buy my first income property.

About a year later I finally purchased my first income property in British Columbia, Canada. It's a house with a unit upstairs and a unit downstairs that I rent out on a buy and hold strategy, as cashflow here isn't anything like it is in the US, and appreciation seems to be the main method of real estate investment here.

Note that all prices below are in Canadian (CAD).

I got a bit lucky in that the market here exploded and I did really well with my investment. In my city, appreciation over 1 year ago on average was a staggering 19%! I purchased my income property almost exactly 2 years ago for $274,000. My realtor believes that I could now sell it for $360,000.

I put $140,000 down, which leaves me with a 61% ROI, and I currently owe about $128,000 on the mortgage. Rents each month are $1,900 with almost no vacancy (HUGE rental demand here), and basically breaks even on net cash flow after taxes and all expenses.

For a living I am self-employed but haven't been making any money for a couple of years, and am just barely making enough to stay afloat with my living costs, with no extra money saved up for more real estate investment, and no such investment money to be seen anywhere in the near future either.

So my question to you is, do I have any options with what I have to do any more kind of investing, such as maybe somehow refinancing and taking equity out of my income property? Taking equity out of my personal home is out of the question. How would that work, anyway? And what kind of numbers would we be talking about here?

I know I could ask a mortgage broker about this, but I want to hear from you expert investors on if I have any options here.

Thanks!