Reading Your Report
Your report compares keeping this home as a rental against selling it and investing the proceeds — but it only measures money. Becoming a landlord on a home you already own changes more than your balance sheet.
The sell-vs-keep comparison underwrites this decision the way an investor would: cash flow, cap rate, return on the equity you've already built, and what your equity position looks like years from now versus selling today and investing the proceeds. That's the right lens for the financial half of the question.
But unlike an investor buying a rental on day one, you're starting from a home you already own — with history, memories, and maybe a mortgage rate you locked in years ago that you'd lose if you sold. That changes the calculus in ways a score can't fully capture.
Neither column is automatically right. Your report tells you which one wins on paper, given the assumptions you entered — it's on you to weigh that against how much hassle you're actually willing to take on.
These factors don't show up as a line item in your report, but they're worth thinking through before you decide either way.
Screening tenants, collecting rent, handling repairs at 11pm, and dealing with a vacancy when it happens are real jobs — whether you do them yourself or pay a property manager roughly 8-10% of rent to do them for you. Your report's management-fee toggle accounts for the cost, not the hassle.
If you locked in a rate well below today's market, selling means giving that up for good — your next home, if you buy one, resets to current rates. Renting this one out lets you keep that financing advantage working in the background.
The report spreads vacancy and maintenance costs evenly across the year for modeling purposes, but in reality they show up unevenly — a furnace fails in one month, a tenant leaves with no notice in another. Make sure your cash cushion can absorb a bad month, not just the average one.
Roughly 6% of the sale price goes to selling costs in this report's assumptions, and once it's sold, it's sold — you can't change your mind in two years if the market or your situation shifts. Keeping it as a rental preserves that optionality, even if the near-term numbers are tighter.
This report tells you which option wins financially, given the numbers you entered. It's not telling you whether you want to be a landlord — that part of the decision is yours.
Run Your Rent-vs-Sell Numbers