Invest a 3 yrs old house

[Gael Yimen Yimga]

Hello Real estate investors.

My name is Gael and I’m new to Real Estate Investment. We (my wife and I), we bought a brand new house (4 bedrooms, a loft, an office, one living room, a sun room a kitchen with a bigger island, 2,5 bathroom, two car garage) three years ago where we are currently living.

During those years, we had two kids and we found that the house is now smaller for all of us. So, we decided to move to another house bigger and also start real estate investment.

We signed a contract for a brand new house bigger than the current one. At the same time, we wanted to sell our current house and then buy a smaller house to live in while we are waiting for the bigger house to be built.

Five months ago we tried to sell the house to move to another small house and we were expecting to make some money to put down for the small house. The goal was that the small house can become our first investment property.

The house stayed on the market for about two weeks and we had no traffic, then we decided to take it off the market and live there until the other is built. There is a builder around the neighborhood that is selling brand new houses. Our real estate agent told us that the builder around the neighborhood is attracting all the traffic and that we need to wait for a while before selling and we followed the agent advice.

Now the new house will be ready by June 2021. We will have the house ready for investment. So I wanted to know what will be a reasonable strategy to manage our current house when it will be vacant ? Is it relevant to rent a house that is only 3 years old with the size I described above? What are the risks ? Is selling a best option given that it is still like a brand new house and buy a smaller house ? I hope that by selling we can make some money that we can put down for a smaller house ? Is renting that house could be risky if the tenants are not responsible?

Please we want to take the four or five months we currently have to anticipate on what to do when the time comes.

Thanks in advance for you advice and your help.

Gael.