Sell or Rent my house?

[Nichola King]

Hey guys, I'm new here, but been scanning this forum for the last 2 days and some of you seem to give great advice so I thought I would join and pick your brains. I'm planning to see a CPA next week....but would love some feed back here in the meantime cos I'm stressing out...lol

My family and I relocated down to San Diego from LA 5/6 months ago...the company so far have been paying our rent here ($3600) , but we still own and pay for our home back in LA. Now we need to make a decision to either rent or sell our home, as they won't pay our rent here forever. The company has agreed to pay for all closing costs if we sell.
Details:
We bought the house/condo in Dec 2004 at $450k
and have just over 400k left on the mortgage, I think that the house might be worth now anywhere between $420 -$460...hard to tell in the complex cos of so many foreclosures...
We pay about $5,400 in property tax, and pay 2 HOA's.. $400 a month ($100 for the area, and $300 for the gated community).
Now I was going to rent for $2600 to cover the mortgage (which is about $2500...the principle is about $250 the rest is interest)), and cover the HOA's and property tax myself...the thing is my husband earns over $150k so we don't get the tax benefits as far as I know.
We do have extra money aside ..about $80-90k in the UK...was hoping to use that to help upgrade to a new home someday...don't mind spending some of it to keep the current...but just scared of throwing our money away in the meantime even if the house does go back up again in few years...and make no money at all but a loss...most of all our savings gone..house now has capital gains if we leave it too long (even if we can recoup some of that loss as passive loss when we sell...seems like injecting so much money each month over x amount of years won't really pay back), and the company not paying closing costs then etc...
Is it worth it, should we just sell?...what about tax benefits of keeping it as a holiday home...seem as though we won't qualify for tax deductions if it's rented but do on a second home.

Any advice would be appreciated.. :wink:
we've lived in the house for 5 yrs btw