My wife and I own a 2-bedroom co-op apartment in Manhattan (New York City). It's currently worth about 1.6 million dollars. (We benefited from the increase in New York real estate prices over the last 20 years.) Because we were making extra mortgage payments over time, our remaining balance is relatively low, less than 100K. The maintenance fee on our apartment is about $1780 per month, which covers things like property taxes, mortgage payments on the overall building, and the doormen salary. A portion of the fee is tax deductible; I don't remember the exact percent, but let's say 60%.
On a lark (being recent empty nesters), we just moved to a Caribbean island. My wife is teaching at the medical school here. We're renting a furnished 2-bedroom apartment on the island. Because our new place is furnished, we left most of our stuff in New York. My wife's contract with the med school is year to year. We're not sure how long we'll stay. (We love the island, but we also miss our family and friends in the US.) I'm telecommuting. When we moved, I reduced my hours to half time, and in a few months I will probably retire. I'm 50 and my wife is 47.
During breaks in the med school (about 9 weeks per year), we're currently planning to head back to our apartment in New York, to visit friends and family and enjoy the city.
At some point, we have to decide what to do with our Manhattan apartment. Some options are
- Do nothing (until we figure out our long-term plan).
- Sell the apartment.
- Rent the apartment out. We could probably rent it out for about $7500 per month. Because our building is a co-op, any rental agreement would need to be approved by the co-op board (which doesn't like having too many apartments rented out at a time), and the co-op takes a cut (maybe like 10%).
If we sell or rent out, we'd have to figure out where to stay when we visit the US. We'd also have figure out what to do with our stuff.
Any advice on what to do with our apartment?