Keep current home as rental?

[Cindy Harney]

Would love some advice!

My husband and I purchased our current home in June 2018 for $160k. We were planning to downsize, but I am pregnant so we are building and upsizing again - we both work from home and this will be Us plus three kids in 1500sq ft. Just can’t do it.

So, husband wants to rent the house out. Mortgage is $1150 and we could rent for about $1300 per month so not much extra there. The house is in great shape! Roof is about 8 years old, but Ac will need to be replaced soon (about $4000) as the unit is undersized for the house so it struggles in the GA summers. Anyway, the house is in an incredibly desirable school district and would stay rented! Likely no down time between tenants.

The market for our price point is strong, though and we could probably get $200k for the house if we sold it. However, we would owe capital gains taxes if we sold since it hasn’t even been a year.

We have had rentals before and I’m a real estate agent so the ins and outs of being a landlord don’t scare me. Just the lack of cash flow. Any advice about which route to take would be greatly appreciated!