If i buy a new house should I sell my residence or rent it out?

[Jon S.]

My house is paid off. It has a HELOC used for real estate investing. I've been in it for more than 10 yrs, and I recently learned that if I lived in it for 2 years I can sell it and have zero taxes on the capital gain. I'm a buy and hold investor so keeping it makes sense but passing up on selling with no tax consequence also makes sense. Also, I would have approximately $300k from the sale. In terms of opportunity, I could keep the house and expect $2000/mo rent or I could sell it and use the $300k as a deposit on a $1M multifamily commercial property, which would probably have $6000-$10000/mo rents. The latter sounds pretty good to me. I don't have a particular MF property in mind; but I am looking at a new house to move to. Any thoughts, advice, resources? Thank you

[Jon S.]

@Cory Wallace

True, paying it off provided more choices. I hadn't thought about it that way. Plus I think I can rent and keep the HELOC. So I wouldn't need to sell to access the equity for capital.