Hello. I'm not even sure really how to ask the question, but here it goes.
My wife and I own a house outright in an OK town. The problem is that is it very small, (2 BR, 1 Bath, about 800 sq ft) and we're not exactly sure what to do now that we're needing some more space.
For a couple, it's great. Its within 5 miles or so of each of our jobs, close to major highways and really quite convenient. But its on a very busy street in a so-so town. With a 2 year old, and another planned, its going to get tight real soon, plus I worry about being so close to a busy road. (safety, pollution, noise) We could use a little more space, inside and out, but I want to be smart about it too.
I figure we could...
Sell it for 230K ish and put it toward something bigger, but to buy something larger in the area we live, we'd have to get a mortgage of at least 100k and probably more like 200k. Houses around here are stupid expensive.
Expand it so that we get the extra space we need. Either finish the attic for an addl bedroom, and push out the kitchen or something like that. That could work. Probably cheaper, but then our already high taxes would be even higher and we're still in the location I have concerns with.
Leave it alone, keep it and rent it. Use the income and a HELOC type of thing to finance a larger home in a nicer area. But then we'd be making payments on 2 houses whereas now I have zero payments, and I'm not sure I want to get involved in the landloard thing unless its a real no-bariner solution here.
Any thoughts? Any head-smacking options I'm just missing?
Thanks!
