Sell or rent out starter home?
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Anonymous
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Current home is worth $585k. Owe $90k on a HELOC. Looking to move up to something in the $850k range.
Option A: sell house (clearing $460k) and then get a $390k mortgage on new place. Option B: tap current HELOC for $225k down payment and then get $625k mortgage on new house (which would then be conforming). I can rent the current house to an O4, which would be $3100/month. The new HELOC balance of $315k would be around $1500, and taxes and insurance is another $500, so I would clear $1100/month before maintenance. I would accelerate the HELOC balance as I have done the last few years. Thoughts? Suggestions? |
Anonymous
There are various rules for deciding on whether to buy/keep an investment property (check out site Bigger Pockets) and those rules dictate that you should sell. Also keep in mind expenses like finding tenants, mgmt company if you hire one, taxes on the rental income, vacancies, and your time. Maybe estimate that you'll net $500/mo after everything else. Is that worth it to you? The times when I've had friends rent their starter homes in high COL areas and it made sense was when the home appreciated a lot in the rental period. That does happen, you know best whether your house is likely to do that. |
Anonymous
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Agree with 7:49. I have tons of friends who rent their old place and have done it myself in the past. I think too many people do it. They're underestimating their total holding costs, some of the tax implications, and what else they could be doing with that money . Unless you have a very concrete reason to think your old place will appreciate rapidly, I would be cautious.
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Anonymous
| Absolutely sell. |
Anonymous
| I know a couple guys that moved back into the 'starter' condo post divorce. |
Anonymous
| Thanks for the responses. It's a standard suburban home but has express bus to Pentagon, which makes the renters almost 100% military. I generally think officers and families are a better class of tenant, but I'm not expecting anything other than market appreciation, so leaning towards selling. |
Anonymous
2c more towards selling - while military renters are good in terms of timely payments, there is military clause in the lease (30 day notice in case of reassignment). You might ended up looking for tenants more often then planned - more work, headache and possible vacancies. |
Anonymous
| Definitely sell, and take your $$ take free. |
Anonymous
| also depends how you want to allocate your assets. we are selling our condo which is in a popular area of downtown, not because we don't think it can be rented out, but more because we don't want 95% of our assets in DMV real estate. |
Anonymous
| "Starter" homes/condos are incredibly stupid. |
Anonymous
Disagree. I've been renting the townhouse I bought before I got married. I've had great luck with tenants and manage it myself. The rent is more than 2x the mortgage payment and I've been able to pay off most of the loan. I bought for under 200k. They are selling for around $500k now. The mortgage is under 30k. |
Anonymous
Tax free |
Anonymous
| Sell unless you have a huge stock portfolio and really need to diversify. As in you have so much in your brokerage you don't know what to do with it. |
Anonymous
Just wait to you have to pay taxes on that profit... |
Anonymous
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Hi OP. I did the same w/my "starter home" (i.e. the house I bought before I met my husband and we bought a home together). I enjoyed renting when I had good tenants. I hated renting when I had bad tenants/a property management company that turned out to suck. Hopefully you will find good tenants and not need a property management company--I ended up using one after a year or so and ended up resenting every.single.dollar that they got from me.
What would the tax implications be from your rental income? |