Accidental investor.. To sell or not to sell?

[Josh Baney]

Excited to have found this website and forum! I think I may have stumbled into real estate investing without realizing it haha. My wife and I bought a beach home in SC, 2 years ago during covid. We decided to rent it out on Airbnb when we weren't using it and found we did pretty well. On one trip down, we actually saw the house across the street being remodeled. I went and spoke with the contractor and let him know we love the area and would be interesting in buying the house and to talk to me first before he put it on the market. Happily, purchased that home in May and moved down in August.

Little did I know I may have been doing a form of house hacking, because we furnished the home and rented it out on Airbnb for the busy Summer season before moving down to start the school year with my 1st grader. Those 2 months helped offset a majority of our mortgage woohoo! We kept our original home in Charlotte and rented it out on a 9 month lease. So we now have 3 homes: the one we live in, the Airbnb across the street, and our original home in Charlotte that we are now renting. The house we live in we are going to rent again this Summer and move back to our original home in Clt for 2 months to capitalize on the high season.

My wife and I just found a home we would like to move in as our primary and have just enough to put 5% down. I would then rent the house we live in now on Airbnb full time as we have seen a glimpse of what it can do in the Summer (and have a great gauge with the other Airbnb we have across the street.) Since we have decided to make the full time move, would I be best to sell the Charlotte home, take the equity to put down on our new primary (and wife wants a pool)? Or should we continue renting the Charlotte home and use all our savings for the 5% down. The house in Charlotte I have on a 15 year note at 2.2% with 13 years left so I am reluctant to give that up. We make about $1,000 month renting that home, but on the flip side have about $200k in equity we could use for our new primary, pool, and maybe a potential down payment on another rental home?

Am I considered a real estate investor? I have been saving up the old fashion way to put down payments of 5 - 10%. After we buy this next home as a primary, it seems like I could be using hard money loans a lot quicker and then refinancing to traditional if I would like to continue to buy more properties? Long post and loaded questions I know but would appreciate any advice.