Will My House Make A good Rental?

[Ben Le Fort]

Hi All,

Quick summary, my wife and I are considering the possibility of moving in the next few years and are trying to figure out if our house would make a decent rental or if we should just sell and invest the profits.

Our house, 3 bedrooms 1100 St ft (plus finished basement) raised bungalow, with a giant backyard. In a very established neighborhood that has both similar houses to ours, much bigger houses on one end and multi-family rentals on the other end. 

House is worth anywhere between $500-$520 we owe $330 and would be down to about $290 on the mortgage by the time we would consider moving. 

My wife is concerned that our finishes on the inside of the house are "too nice" to be a rental. I'm split between that making it hard to rent or that being a good thing to price us in a range with higher quality tenants.

Would love to hear from you all on what you would do?

Thanks,

Ben

[Jason D.]

@Ben Le Fort what you're doing is "investing" $200k in equity, and It "making" a couple hundred a month. The question to ask yourself is this.... If I had $200k, would I use that as a down payment on a rental that cash flows $200/mo? I hope the answer is no, and that means you should sell the property and not rent it. It's a terrible use of equity.