Rental house problems. To keep or sell????

Anyone any thoughts on this?

I own a house that has a lot of rooms in a major city where the prices have gone up and up.

House is in an up and coming area and I believe it will go up some more, maybe the zoning will change enabling the land to be split in two, at which time it could really be worth a lot of money.

Thing is that I moved out the house about 5 years ago, I've owned the house for 7 years.

I moved partly because I don't like the area, to me it's boring.

I much prefer the area I live in now. I step outside to beaches, bars and cafe's and 10 minutes to downtown. Not to mention lots of hot babes.

The house has been a good and bad thing for me.

On the one hand it's like a fvcking albertros around my neck, always needing feeding, and looking after. All the rentals to take care of, pain in the ass emergency repairs, sucking all my time and money over the years.

On the other I've met some cool people that rented rooms there ( I rent rooms to international students) I also have a renovation business and have a great little workshop there and place to store all my stuff.

I almost sold it 5 years back, but my buddy convinced me to keep it.

I'm glad I did as it's gone up in value around 250 thousand bucks since then, at least a 150 of that in the last year and a half.

I've recently run into a problem, the problem being that the city inspector contacted me and wants to inspect inside my house as they had a complaint of too many people living there.

When they do there inspection they will for sure tell me too many people living there and I'm going to lose some of the rental income.

I need a high rental income to cover all the bills and mortgage. Expensive here!

Also technically I should be living there otherwise they consider it to be a rooming house.

That would suck somewhat as I currently live right next to the beach, and my house is in suburbia, mostly Chinese families and boring as can be.

I have to make a decision quickly as city want to see it in next few weeks.

Simple way is to sell, take my 400K, and buy a small apartment cash, have 120k left over and do whatever.

Other is move in, sit on it and wait and see... If I sold it and in 5 years it's worth 300 thousand more that today, would be p1ssed off!

There's lots of other variations I could do, such as appear to have moved in, let the dust settle and then carry on as I have last 7 years.

Then again, it's been a pain in the azz, probably will continue to be a pain in the azz..... how long to take the pain in the azz for?

It really slowed me down having that albatross around my neck.

This spring summer I thought I'd finally got my sh1t together and re financed my mortgage paid all me sh1t off..... was free of the burden.... met a young chick, bounced onto another one after that, lots of time down the beach, happy! Enjoying life...

Now the fvcking albatross is back and saying keep me here and you might be rich in a few years..... thing is it might be right! As my buddy pointed out, you only have to do that one thing like buy this house, sit on it long enough and your a millionaire! I honestly think if I hang onto this for a another 5 or 6 years, knock it down and build a new house (maybe 2 if zoning changes) I'd probably stack a million bucks in the bank.

What to do what to do?????

I don't know much about real estate for investment purposes. But it sounds to me like it's time to cut your losses and sell the rental place as it would be a big relief for you. You could end up selling it and having it be worth 500k in another several years, or, it could also still be worth 400k and suck hours and hours of your time by then too. Who knows what the market will do. They say home values always go up.. But will they? SOunds like you have a lot of other good uses of your time where you live if you weren't fiddle farting with that house. I had a rental once for a few short months that I lived like 200 feet from a bar. That's some good times right there!

I'm in a similar boat, but not as far along as you are. My house is worth 250k and if I sold it today I would probably break even or maybe walk away with a little profit. It's the only house I own and I live in it, I don't have any rentals. But lately I have been thinking about "does one man really need this much house?". I love the house but I bought it more for the location than the house itself. Its a beautiful area, one I had wanted to live in sense I was a teenager and had friends here. And houses don't come for sale here much. But I am leaning towards selling it and getting into something smaller that isn't so much work, right there with you.. I just haven't made the move but I think it's time. I'm also thinking of moving out of Illinois but hard to say if I will.

Sell it, and invest in something else. Nobody says you have to continue investing in that particular house, or even continue investing in real estate property.

I've been somewhat torn on what to do with my parents' house once I inherit it. These are my options:

1) Rent it out, make extra money off it, have it be a pain in the ass with maintenance and tenants, and continue to have my own mortgage

2) Sell it, pay off my mortgage, be debt free, have no pain in the ass.

I'm personally looking forward to being debt free with less stress as opposed to having extra income and having it eat up my time and energy.

So if you want my personal opinion, stress free is the way to go. I have an investor putting my money to work, so it's less for me to worry about. I may not make as much as quickly as I'd like, but I'm still making it.

1. What is your monthly rent roll?

2. What is your monthly housing expense (mortgage, tax, insurance, water, sewer, and upkeep)?

3. State again what your equity is, 400k?