Rent it out.

When keeping it makes sense

• The rent covers the note with room to spare. Not exactly. With room.
• You're not in a hurry to have the cash
• Your rate is well under what you'd pay to borrow today
• You're moving, but you're not certain it's forever
• You'd like to own two things in ten years instead of one

The number people get wrong

Rent minus mortgage is not profit. I wish it were.

The honest version takes out vacancy — assume some every year, because you'll have some every year — plus maintenance, the big stuff that fails on a schedule you don't control, management if you're not doing it yourself, and the tax picture, which is genuinely complicated and is where your CPA earns their money.

Run it that way and some houses are obviously keepers and some obviously aren't. The ones in the middle are a judgment call, and that's a conversation, not a spreadsheet.

Be honest about whether you want to be a landlord. Some people hate it.

One thing worth knowing before you decide

There's a tax treatment that can matter a lot when you sell a home you used to live in, and it doesn't last forever after you move out. Turning your primary residence into a rental starts a clock.

I'm not going to give you the specifics — that's your CPA's job and the details are past where I'm allowed to go. But you should know the clock exists before you decide, not two years later when somebody mentions it in passing.

If this isn't it

Where I stop. Some of this runs into tax, legal or lending territory. I'll walk you through the options and what each one generally means, and then we bring in your CPA or your attorney before you sign anything. I'm not either of those and I'm not going to pretend otherwise.