However, Austin saw a 26% decrease in active listings and a 5% decline in new listings.

A good Property Manager will answer all of these questions for you and take all of the stress off your hands.

My philosophy is that if I leave a few dollars in the property its worth having the peace of mind and will keep me into the properties for longer as opposed to trying to pull out everything as fast as possible and getting upset when a water heater dies and selling to get away from the stress. 

Ideally, I would love to set up an ally-type-account to hold the reserves because of the savings interest rate they offer (though it has decreased lately) and then find a credit card with no annual fee and decent cash back (there will be a big rehab on this one).

But if you’ve sat through the 30% run up of the last couple years waiting for a 5-10% decrease then you are timing the market and currently losing.

But I’d probably keep your capital accessible unless you really want to remodel your home — which I am sure you know is stressful if you are living in it.

But if you sell to lower stress, that is valid and reasonable (especially with children and also covid).

Builders typically offer incentives such as closing costs paid for, title survey paid for and sometimes even flex cash (cash used for rate buy-down, purchase price decrease, anything you want).

Here we’ve seen a decrease in inventory of almost 30% vs. the same month last year, but buyer demand is steady, resulting in bidding wars and an increase on home prices. 

Given that this was my first purchase, perhaps finding something less stressful would have been helpful!