Should I Sell or Rent ? My family is relocating.
Hello, I am a real estate agent and investor in Columbus, Ohio. I currently only have 2 investment properties in my portfolio. 1 is a single family home that is currently rented to a long term tenant. The other is a duplex that is finishing up remodeling. I will give some information on those 2 properties and then explain the predicament that I am in.
The SF is very low maintenance, great tenant, and cash flows $400 a month. I currently owe 77k on the property (4.25% rate fixed) but comps in the area are going for 140k-150k.
The duplex I purchased at a high price of 485k in February 2020, at the time it was doing crazy numbers on Airbnb and its in an great neighborhood in downtown Columbus that is growing everyday. I learned my lesson the hard way when covid hit and that took a dive and so I was planning on renting out both sides to long term tenants. I was going to house hack until I learned that rents for each side in that area were going for over 2k/month a side and I figured I could get an apartment for 1k/monthly and rent out both sides. After choosing my property manager they did a walkthrough with me and said I could get a better tenant paying more if I updated some things. Long story short I am 6 months into this remodel with unreliable contractors but we are finally finishing up. When I purchased the property my out of pocket was 115k and when the remodel is done I will have around 110k into it but its completely done from top to bottom. Leaving me all in at 225k out of pocket. I currently owe 380k (4% rate fixed) on the mortgage ($2500/monthly payment w/ tax and insurance). I could rent each side for around 2200-2400. I have also factored into my remodeling budget to pay an attorney to help me convert it to two separate condos. A flipper 3 houses down on a replicate property used this strategy and it worked great. So the decision is to continue to rent it out with my property manager at roughly 1k monthly cashflow after expenses, or sell it as two separate condos at 345k a piece which would leave me netting somewhere around 55k before taxes.
My initial reaction was to just hold it for as long as possible but we have recently decided to move our family to Florida in January of 2022. So my thought was that even though it would probably be better to hold, it may be worth it to sell so that I have plenty of capital to start investing in Florida. I want to start house hacking and BRRRRing as soon as we get down there and this recent remodel has left me very light on cash (roughly 20k). So my question is would you sell this property to be able to do more work in the new market that I am moving to ? Or should I hold here in Columbus, possibly refinance, and start my investing journey a little slower in Florida ?
Any thoughts or advice would be much appreciated. Also if you are in the Florida area (Orlando, Tampa, Merritt Island) and have any advice on investing in these markets, I am always looking to grow my network and bring value any way that I can so please do not hesitate to reach out. Thank you !