Pursuing 2nd Purchase

[Jason Rowlett]

Hello,

I am a new investor with an occupied condo in California. It is currently worth $300k - I purchased it for $200k two years ago. I have since moved to Texas and I am looking for a primary residence in Austin. The condo lets for $1600/mo and my mortgage and other expenses total $1370 leaving me $230 in the black each month. The current mortgage balance is $132k.

Should I sell my condo and put a large down payment on a new home OR should I hold onto the condo and borrow against it?

My long term goal is to build a real estate empire consisting of both residential and commercial properties. I am leaning toward holding onto the condo to that end.

Thanks for your good advice!

JD

[Eric Hegwer]

I think the two comments above mine are good, but here's a way to make your funds go farther:

Sell the California condo. You are not there to manage it and you have a ton of equity in it just sitting there. 

Take the $150k or so and use it to buy 3 or 4 properties here in Austin.  Out the required 20% down and carefully choose places that will also cash flow positive. You can possibly increase your monthly profits from $250 /month to 4x that this way.