To buy or sell our NYC property to kickstart our investing career

[Sarah Karakaian]

Hi all!

I'm new here, but a long time listener of the podcast. My husband and I run a contracting and design company but have wanted to start an investing career. We live in NYC and it's becoming increasingly harder to run our contracting business from our tiny house. We're ready to pack up and move to a different market...but do we sell or rent out our Queens property?

If we sell, we can make almost double what we bought it for in 2012. We would then use that money for our move and to purchase a multi-family and a flip to get our investment career going. (Happy to get into detail if anyone is willing to help us with this decision).

OR we rent it out. We could probably make double what the mortgage is and have an asset in NYC, but we'll have to get someone to take care of the property, bc we're hoping to move to the west coast. 

What's the best way to weigh your options? If we sell, that's it - we no longer have an asset in NYC, but we have more money to get our life started - or do we think more long term and keep it?

[Joel Owens]

You need to measure cost of living where you are now to where you want to move to.

If you say bought a property with the proceeds where you want to move to but costs are higher there then the cash flow is worth less dollar for dollar.

Now the market you might move to might have faster appreciation growth. You need to look at where the current cycle is in the market now for the property you own for a hold/sell analysis and what the market is doing in the cycle where you want to move to.

Additionally you need to look at where you move to is there a big demand for interior design work and contracting or is that market saturated? This is not a decision to take lightly.

For example where I live in GA if you make 100k a year here the cost of living is cheap so most could live like a king.

In California bringing in 100k might just pay the bills in the some areas to stay afloat so income versus cost of living for an area is key.