Newbie from Columbia MD

[Caleb Waller]

Whats up Bigger Pockets!

Very excited to join this community! My name is Caleb Waller and I am brand new to the real estate investing world. I am currently hoping to learn from others about converting their owner occupied home into a buy and hold cash flowing rental or selling and using the equity to purchase both a new home and an investment property. 

I bought my current home in Columbia MD through a foreclosure auction for $256k it recently appraised for 300K. June 2016 I will have lived in my house for two years and understand a little about the tax benefits of selling after two years. 

What do you think I should do? Rent out my current house or sell and reinvest? I am hoping to stay in the Howard County area and with a baby on the way would like to move to a better school district... Howard County real estate is by no means cheap...

Looking forward to meeting you all and learning more!

- Caleb  

[Russell Brazil]

Welcome to BP @Caleb Waller. Keep in mind that when you sell you will lose roughly 8% of the properties value to selling costs...commissions, transfer taxes, recordation taxes, and other various fees. So if your sales price is $300k, then your proceeds will roughly be $276,000 minus your mortgage balance.  Im a big believer that owning real estate over long periods of time is how you really build wealth. But Ive also sold some properties in short periods of time, 2-4 year holding period. But when I did sell in short periods of time, the ones I sold off were either big mistakes that I should never have bought, and where I lost money....and the others were where I made very large gains.  Selling for a relatively moderate gain like youve made I dont think would be worth it.