First Time Home Buyer living in Queens NY

[Bapshil Fatal]

Hello,

This is my first time posting on this site. To give a bit of background, I'm a 28 year old NYC resident originally from Brooklyn and my family and I bought our very first home ever in Queens. I bought the home with my folks and brother, a single family townhouse in a neighborhood called St Albans back in Feb of this year. Place has been recently renovated and we got it for about $640K (We paid $100K down + $23,000 closing). 

Since we're all new to this, we've made some mistakes when deciding on where we want to live and unfortunately, we feel that our new home is not right for us. I was thinking we should sell at least in 2 years but other people suggest we should rent it out in that time frame. Mortgage is about $3,900 a month (including HOA and property tax) and can't imagine trying to rent it out.

I don't want to sell at a loss but understand that with appreciation and costs to consider, it could be strong possibility. I just want to know if there's any helpful suggestions I could get for what I should do in the next 2 -4 years for a total newb in real estate.

[Randall Alan]

@Bapshil Fatal

I would look at the properties around it for rent and see what similar sized properties are renting for. Be sure to consider both square footage and bedrooms/bathrooms. If there are others that are renting at a rate that will cover your mortgage plus some extra for repairs and profit, it should rent.

You can use Zillow.com and turn off homes for sale, and turn on rentals to look at those rates.  While there you could also look at the home's value as well if you were thinking of selling.  

The biggest thing to keep in mind if you do rent it is that you are allowed to exempt sales profits of up to $250,000 for a single person, or $500,000 for a married couple if you lived in the home for 2 of the last 5 years.  So if you do sell it early, you would be taxed on any of the profits you might make until that 2 year period.  Maybe it's not a factor, but perhaps it is a consideration. 

All the best!

Randy