Renting (Long-term or Short-Term) vs Selling

[Jared Ladia]

I'm in the very early stages of researching different options of renting vs selling my home. It would probably be another 1-2 years before I moved out. I have a 970sqft 3br 2ba house with a fenced-in backyard in Roanoke, VA. I have a 15-year 2.25% mortgage with a little over $112k left on it. My monthly is $985. It's currently appraising for around $148k. Would love any suggestions/pros/cons of renting or selling.

[Curtis Denlinger]

With the amount you still have to pay I don’t think cashing out is an option yet. I don’t know your address so research rent, so I just clicked a random address on Google maps to find a zip code for Roanoke. Looks like a 3/2 in the 24017 area could rent for $1,100. Low confidence on that estimate though. You said your monthly is $985 I think. I’m not sure what that is including. Is that mortgage, taxes, insurance, vacancy, maintenance etc?  Depending on what is and isn’t in that number, you could make $100+ a month if you rent it or you could be losing a few hundred a month. Not to mention you will be renting it to someone so that means you will have to go somewhere else and pay rent too. 

I think the better option might be to sell and then put the profits into a multi-family that you could house hack. So then instead of maybe losing a few hundred a month and paying someone else $1,000+- in rent, now you live in the property you own and someone else is paying most or all your mortgage AND you don’t have to pay someone else rent!  

I think that’s definitely what I would do.