Sell or Rent? Need help analyzing costs among different homes

[Lance Smith]

Hello,

We are moving into a new home and will be selling or renting out our old one. We had a private lender loan us the money to get out of our VA loan in order to pay 0 down on the new home. We have to refinance to pay the lender back and there is more than enough equity in the home to do this. However, we are looking at all of our options, one of them being sell the home and purchase a different rental (or 2) in another market. We are trying to analyze the monthly costs (property management, CapEx, Vacancies, etc) and are having a difficult time. It seems the calculations are based on the gross rent. How would you calculate these costs if some of the houses are almost identical but in different markets? For instance, our current home is in Denver and the rents are much higher than the homes we are looking at in Tennessee. However, the homes are almost identical.

The main reason I ask is because our current home shows a negative cash flow but I believe, possibly falsely, it is due to the large demand in rent.  Any thoughts or input on this would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Lance