STUCK! What to do next? Cash out? Sell? Hold?

[Cari Childers]

My husband and I are in a good position overall but really STUCK on our next move. Need some expert advice!! 

We are both working full time and have a combined income of 200K.

Here’s what we have…

We own a 3/1 block single family property we bought in 2012 in downtown Orlando for 120 K, as our first primary residence, we paid it down to 75 K, cashed out two years ago and pulled 100 k out at 3.8 interest rate - we now owe $180K and could probably sell it for 300 K.  We now are still renting this property and it cash flows about 700/month as a long term rental.  

We used that 100 K and bought a block triplex in Saint Cloud with pool a year ago also in central Florida for $425,000 at a 2.8 percent interest rate.  We owe 318,000 and it’s now worth around 630 K.   We replaced the roof, gutters, all hot water heaters, and all air conditioners. The property cash flows 1700/month to long term renters and is in great shape now. 

We also bought a duplex last year that was 1.6 million in Miami Florida. The home is
historic and was converted to a 6 plex without permits by the previous owner (yikes I know haha).  We were able to get it rezoned to be a short term rental and just have to do a few items to be allowed to call it a 6 plex, after a lot of work, and it’s cash flowing 10K per month after expenses.  I think rezoning/fixing permitting has increased the property value and could sell for 2.1 million.  Since we just purchased in October, we aren’t ready to refi or sell this one.  

What's next? Should we cash out refi the Saint Cloud house? The lenders said we could pull about 125 K to leave 25% in. Our interest rate would be much higher and we wouldn't cash flow as much (maybe 200$ at a 6.9 interest DSCR) Should we sell one? Hold and save up again?

 We don’t have much left in our accounts after all the dust has settled - about 30 k that we need to keep in there for repairs, but would love to keep going and buy a primary residence/duplex next, we are renting a bedroom at the moment and would love to have our own space as we are getting older haha but have been house hacking for a long time  to set ourselves up the last few years!  We could save up again but it may take another year or two to have enough for 25 % down especially in south Florida.  Please help, my brilliant investor friends!!! 

[Randall Alan]

You don’t mention how you bought the Miami Duplex.  If you put 25% down and it has appreciated by $500,000, you probably have some liquidity you could access there if you really needed to.  All your other properties are cash flowing and doing anything with them would seem counter productive from a refi perspective with high rates right now.  It really doesn’t make any sense to give up a 2.8% rate and go to a 6% rate just to get a short term bump in cash, when you already have good cash flow.  You could wait a year, save up $10k per month and come out way further ahead in the long run than giving up your 2% rate.  

Sometimes the answer is to sit still and enjoy the ride.

Randy