Moved to a new home, rent or sell townhome? Can't decide

[Nate Hansen]

I've got a quandary that I'm stressing out over... rent or sell our townhome after moving to a new house.

I've been excited to move to a house and have my first rental, but as I'm assessing the numbers/other factors I don't know if it's right for a rental.

The mortgage on the townhome is $1400/month with $150 HOA. It's 3 years old and is a modern, kind of fancy place that we paid a high price per square foot to get into. And I think that's the problem. Based on other rentals around the same size in the area, it looks like it would rent for $1,600 a month, and I think absolutely best case scenario, $1,800. One realtor told me I could rent it for $2,000 a month, but I just don't see that based on comps in the area.

The other factor is, I have a good income, and thinking through the hassle of renting to MAYBE make $100-200 a month doesn't seem worth it. On the other hand, the renters are buying that investment for me... but 27 more years is a damn long time for that to payoff.

As far as selling, we owe $235 and the same realtor told me it would sell for $285k to $295.

So now as I'm thinking about it, getting ~$40k immediately by selling is sounding better and better.

I guess the third option... rent it for a few years while the market hopefully keeps going up, and sell it while the place still seems nice and new.

I would greatly appreciate any insights, thoughts, advice.... Thanks!