Renting out vs Selling, plus a few questions

[Ralph Noyes]

Hi everyone,

My soon to be wife and I own a house in East Nashville but are moving to St. Louis for her new university job. She bought it 4 years ago for 125K, put down 25K down payment on a 30yr mortgage at around 4% interest. The house is now worth (conservatively) about 225K. It's a small house, about 675 sq ft, that was gutted and re-made before she bought it in 2014. It has a big fenced in yard and is in a hot neighborhood that has long been in the process of gentrification. A few questions:

1) Should we sell it or rent it out? We're leaning towards renting.

2) What should our target price be? Looking at other places in the area, we were thinking about $1,400/month.

3) Property manager or not? We're leaning towards a property manager cause we'll be out of state, are not terribly handy, and both will be busy with our careers.

4) What's the best way to go about getting it rented out? I assume it'll have to be cleaned and repainted. 

5) Should we refinance to a 15 year mortgage to get a lower interest rate? I realize this will increase the mortgage payment and eat into any profits if we rent, but we can easily afford it and would like to get the sucker paid off.

Any and all advice is super appreciated!!