Hi Scott,
It sounds like you are in a great financial position, congratulations on making it to where you are at.
Now, regarding your questions, there are a lot of details about your situation that we don’t know, so remember there is no one “right” way.
My opinions:
- Keeping your house as a rental may be a short term plan, but the return is too low, that equity could be put to better use elsewhere
- if Airbnb is the only way to make money, it’s probably not a great investment
- I also went through a Dave Ramsey phase where I wanted to eradicate all debt, but your mortgage is cheap money @ 3.1%, so if your month to month financials are under control, which it sounds like they are,
Is your “extra” money better used making 3.1% return by paying down your mortgage or investing it elsewhere
In your situation I see two options I like:
1) sell your house, if you got ~250K (I’m guessing from your post) you would net ~160-170K after mortgage and sales expenses, plus your 60K saved, you would have about 220K to work with
I would want to hold some of the cash for an operating account ~3-5K per door, so if you hold back 20K for operating, You could buy up to $800K worth of property @25% down
- Buy a multi family to house hack
and, on the rest of your investments, if your local market does not offer good enough returns, consider investing somewhere else
2) you love your house, you don’t really want to move
Look at opening a home equity line of credit on your primary residence
That could give you access to ~127.5K ((250K*0.75)-60K owed)
127.5K+60K savings = 187.5K to work with
Regardless of your decisions above, focus on buying good cash flowing deals
Best of luck
