Sell house for loss or Rent out at negative cash flow
Hi everyone,
I'm in a dilemma. I bought a house in Seattle 2 years ago but am moving back to California due to family health and career. I put 50k in for down payment and mortgage rate is 6.25%. With that being said I was paying 4300 monthly including insurance and taxes. Comparatively, houses similar to mine are being rented out for around 3k-3.5k. So when I do the math, compared to renting, I paid an extra 70k.
Due to the market being not great in Washington at the moment, if I were to sell my house, after paying agent fees I'd likely have to pay 4k out of pocket.
If I rent out my house using a property manager that my neighbors are using, after estimating possible vacancy and maintenance fees, I'd be looking at a negative cash flow of around 1700 to 2000 a month. I can definitely afford this with my income. However, I am aware that this would be at the cost of putting that money into stocks or other investments.
Should I take the 74k loss and sell my house now, or should I just rent it out to see if the housing market gets better? What if I plan to come back for retirement one day?