HELP...Sell or Rent Our Home?

[Paris Shewey]

Hi BP family! 

My wife and I own a home in Vancouver, WA where there is huge demand for homes and low inventory and the markets really hot for selling. Most homes are going for well over asking and waving inspection.

We are feeling torn between selling our home and keeping it as a rental. If we sell it now after closing costs we should walk away with anywhere from $130,000 to 160,000 depending on sales price and closing costs. We put $60,000 down and have about $20,000 in repairs into it. We would take our money and look for a a duplex, triplex or four unit multi family we could brrrr.

If we keep the house as a rental we If we keep our house and rent it out the mortgage is $1390 and the average rent in our area for the same type of home of $1950. We would probably need to put at least $3500 into it now to redo the plumbing. We think it would cash flow $350/month.

We don't have cash and we want to keep investing so we would take out a HELOC but we would likely only qualify for 60-80k maybe 100k if we pay $700-800 for an in home appraisal and go with a higher rate around 4.5 variable to get 90% LTV.

Our goal is to have rentals and it seems unwise to walk away from a cash flowing rental but also it seems like if we can capitalize on all the equity and the market being so hot maybe we can take the money we walk away with and find more doors with higher cash flow and be able to invest at a faster rate.

Advice?

[Greg Scott]

Easy. 

$350/mo cash flow on $130,000 in equity means you are getting a 3.2% return on equity.  That's terrible.  If you reinvested in rent properties in cashflowing markets, you could easily triple those returns and have greater diversification of income (more properties).

Also, since this was your primary residence, you are walking away from the capital gains deduction if you hold it as a rental for more than a couple years.

No question. Sell.