“From the street level, I would say rent in and around Temecula is falling sharply.”
It does look like that, yeah…
Silly question, but rental income is taxable income AFTER you’ve deducted mortgage costs, right? It’s net, not gross?
So I either walk away with about 50/60k (equity) now (+ closing cost considerations, though that’s not cash in hand, just cash not spent)…
Or in a sense “buy” my house for 50/60k… assuming rent more or less balances mortgage. Maybe it ends up costing us a couple grand a year, but not a huge deal…
*Sigh* I am thoroughly engrossed in all the replies, but I honestly can’t say I’m any closer to a decision. The poster that said that I’m going to end up regretting whichever option I choose is probably right on the money. Grass is always greener…
If rent and real estate stay flat for 5+ years, I look ahead to that time… I’m about 35k-ish more paid down in my equity, so that 50/60k is now maybe closer to 100k… but now I’ve got closing costs to pay, so subtract +-22k… So 5ish years out and I’m maybe 10k up, net… assuming nobody trashes the place and that I’ve got decent occupancy… big if’s.
So short term it makes no sense… but then if we get modest appreciation and modest rent appreciation beyond that time frame, it starts to look like a brighter picture…
The decision boils down to whether I want to be a long term landlord of a big house from far away, I guess. We may at some point come back to So Cal, though to San Diego, if we did, so then it wouldn’t be so long distance…
Sorry, just using this as a blank space to do some musing – back to your regularly scheduled programming.
