Help with decision to sell or keep
I didn’t know whether to post this on r/personalfinance or here. The situation is that my wife and I are building a house, starting in about a month. Together our take home is $175k. With the house we are building, according to past monthly expenses, we are looking at having a margin of $1500 a month after both essential and normal non essential spending and retirement savings (stocks/non-realestate).
Here’s the issue… $1200 of the $1500 would be projected to be rental income. And we all know here that maintenance, vacancy or some other BS that cuts into your monthly take home from rentals seemingly every month. Bottom line is it’s unreliable and I am extremely nervous of the idea of the majority of my monthly savings margin being from this. Selling the property grants a source for a massive down payment. Or, a medium down payment plus cash reserves for thinking of another rental property closer to where we live.
That would be the other pain point. My rental is 1hr 15min from me and that alone makes everything so much more of a headache when it comes time for tenant changeover, fixing stuff, maintenance, etc. it’s pretty stressful to manage this way.
I don’t know, I poured my heart and soul into this thing to get it off the ground with many hours of sweat equity. I’m definitely not here to brag about it, but she is an absolute wagon of a cash cow compared to anything I would be able to buy today. Mortgage is 4%, only one side of the duplex needs to be rented to cover the mortgage, and it’s pretty nice inside. It would be extremely bitter to see it go away, but in reality with my situation, damn if it wouldn’t feel extremely sweet to not have to deal with it AND have the cash. What do you all think, take the money and run?