So I bought a house in Denver in 2006 (15 min from the airport, walking distance to good charter school, nice, clean, tidy neighbors, easy access to freeway and metro areas, excellent for commuting, lots of shopping within *easy* biking distance etc) a few years ago.
I have a 5% fixed mortgage costing me about $1500/month.
I bought it for $206K and it's now ~$170K if I were to sell it, but I still owe about $192. The house has plenty of decent upgrades.
My office closed, so I moved out of state, and found a pretty good management company (Northpoint Asset Management) to keep my house rented out since I'm far away.
So now I'm 1000 miles away and currently unemployed. I have plenty of savings that I really don't want to touch, but jobs seem hard to come by here (the GF lives here, so housing is cheap and she's employed so I'm not starving).
My thinking is that I might want to consider selling the house if the market comes up to get me at least what I owe on it. The house was built in 2005 so I don't anticipate big issues (water heater, roof etc) but I hate being so far away and having to pay out the ass for small issues (230 dollars to replace a thermostat! I could have done it myself in 5 minutes for $50!).
My thinking is that with it rented out, I only chip in about $120/month to keep the house. It's basically paying for itself. If I sell it before it starts having issues (and I break even) within the next few years, then I can buy another house where I can rent out a basement or granny quarters in the back or however that works out.
Right now I have about $20K in my checking account (for current living expenses), 22K in a 401k from my old job and about another 50K in the stock market, which I don't want to touch because it'll be my retirement (I'm thinking a million in stocks giving me 5% return will be good living when I retire).
I hate having the liability of the house and not being able to keep an eye on it, and the easy answer while I'm underwater on it is to just keep it rented.
I guess my question really is what you would do in this situation? I'm in Texas now, but don't particularly care for where I am. I'll definitely give it a few years for the sake of the GF and giving it a real try, but I am wanting to go back to California (hah, dumb move financially) but most likely check out Portland, OR for a future "I'll settle here for the foreseeable future" house.
So I keep the house rented out for now, don't buy in Texas, then sell my Denver house when I can and put a good down payment on something in Portland (or wherever) and try to make a rental pay for most of it?
Or keep the Denver rental "forever" and just move on with saving up for a down payment on something in Portland when I get there and save like mad while I'm here in Texas?
Of course, I have to find some sort of damn job here too that doesn't eat my soul. It looks like a huge pay cut coming down here, even if I get a job. (I do desktop support, got $58K/year in Denver, here it looks like $40K/year is a good salary for the same position, with the cost of living being aboutthe same, that will hurt!)
Edit: So if I wanted to refi the house, I would have to chip in at least the $20K (192K mortgage to the actual value of $170ish) to be able to get a new loan. I don't see how giving the bank more money makes any sense. As it's a rental, I probably wouldn't be able to get under 5% interest anyway... I just thought of this but don't know if that makes sense in what people think.
Edit 2: I just realized that writing off the mortgage interest makes the house rental save me money as I get some of the money back every year. I am a n00b with renting out my house, so I don't know how all the depreciation and such works when it's a business expense and the house a depreciating asset, but I'll learn that by next tax season I guess.
Anyone know of any good "this is how taxes work on renting out a house" tutorials?