Updated over 5 years ago on . Most recent reply
Another sell vs rent question
My wife and I recently bought and moved into a new home. While ideally we would have sold our old home first, that really wasn't in the cards for us. We have currently listed our house at $125,000, which is probably just a bit higher than acquisition + rehab costs we put into it. We have paid our mortgage down to less than $55,000, with monthly PITI being $928. (We also were conservative in our new home purchase and are able to cover both mortgages, though we've tightened our belts more than we would prefer of course.)
Anyways, we did immediately get an offer on the house, which we took after minimal back-and-forth negotiation led to an agreed-upon price of $112,500. The buyers wanted us to knock off another $9,000 after the inspection, which killed the deal. (We have since gotten some of the work done, for significantly less than what their contractors would have charged due to differences in scope of work.)
Anyways, our realtor thinks we may need to lower our price if we don't get any viewings this weekend, which we are willing to do, to a point.
My question, though, is whether at some point it makes more sense to rent out the home, even if we can only just clear the PITI (say, at $1,000 a month, which seems to be within market rents in the area). Most of what I've read has suggested that you shouldn't rent out a home unless you can cover vacancy rate and a maintenance reserve, but is there a point where it makes sense to hold onto the real estate because of how much equity we have in the house, even if the situation isn't the ideal as far as rental goes?
(Just in case it matters, we have about nine years left on what was a 15-year conventional mortgage)
