I’d like to hear your thoughts/advice/experience. How have you used your primary residence as a springboard to other real estate investing opportunities?

My wife and I want to sell our house and move to another area nearby, and we need to take some cash out of the sale of the first to have enough of a down payment to make that happen. It’s a nice place in a nice area, and I’ve used PadMapper to estimate what we’d be able to rent it for if we kept it, and my numbers look good. I tend to agree that appreciation should be treated as the cherry on top of an already great deal, but in my area of southern Oregon, I feel there’s a very high likelihood of that being a huge asset.

I just hate to leave that money on the table. I’m looking for creative ideas – what might I pursue? My two constraints are that I want to pull some cash out of it for that other down payment, and I want to retain some portion of that real estate if at all possible. My assets are that I have people management experience (although not direct property management), I’m quite handy , and I’m crazy enough to actually try something creative here.

Any thoughts or words of wisdom for me?