While I love the idea of eventually owning a paid-off primary residence, I’m debating whether it’s smarter to sell our current house and use the equity as a down payment on the new home or to keep it as a rental.

Understand risk/reward in how you move on that, and how comfortable you're keeping yourself.

We keep chugging along. 10.2% appreciation in 2024! 

We do not raise it to market rents, we keep it at lease 10% below to try and reduce turnover.

The world of commissions has changed lately and here in Texas they keep us on our toes by rolling out new contract forms monthly.

You'll lose rent while property is vacant, and you'll probably have to do more repairs to attract a new tenant than you would to keep the current tenant.Is all that worth requiring a tenant to use one specific payment platform?

for folks in So cal  I think Vegas is a great choice   1. you can drive there   keep in mind flying to other parts of the country to check on property is going to eat up 1 months rent if you go annually.2.

They will still do the occasional flip, but mostly when a deal presents itself AND they may be between new construction starts so need to keep their teams busy.

So a loss of about 55k We did a lease to own option so I could immediately take over expenses but keep their primary resident loan and interest rate.We agreed to a deal which would cover all their expenses at closing, their remaining loan balance, and $45,000.

They have a vested interest into keeping everyone happy because it is way easier to keep a client then to go find a new one.