Bay Area

[mover]

I have a single family house at Fremont Ardenwood area. Now i have the flexibility to either rent or sale it. Based on current market situration, can you advise me? I bought this house on 2007, for sure i will lost money for saling now. People tell me that market starts  picking up, so maybe i can rent first, and sale later to minimize the loss at least.

[Learn]

So vague.  People will need more $details$ to help you sort it out.

[AgentH]

I'd advise you do a bit more research in terms of what the costs will be on an annual bases to rent your hard earned investment. Amount Insurance will cost you per month, how you will manage your property, and what types of incentives you will offer your renters. As you know, all of these costs add up; especially if you are thinking about getting a management company to take care of all the details involved. If you have mathematically figured out all expenses associated with respect to renting out your long-term investment, and have concluded this is certainly something you are going to do, be sure to check out other landlord experiences throughout the Bay Area; preferably around the area you will be renting you place out.

[ptiemann]

Key information is if you have financing in place, and if so, what terms.

If you can handle the cash flow including all expenses, I would not sell in this market. Buy in a buyer's market, sell in a seller's market. There will be a better time to sell, not only in terms of availability of credit but also how much you will get for it. It could take a long time though.

Also research your tax situation.. key word: 'depreciation'.

[mcwang88]

I found a interesting calcultor for this:

http://www.forbes.com/fdc/rentorsell.shtml

[netman99]

Check out the area sales.

Which part of Ardenwood?

How big like how many bedrooms, bath??

It really depends.

[SamShuehRealtor]

If your home is under water like many home owners in the area, it makes sense to do a SHORT SELL letting lender pay for closing cost, brokerage. You walk out with no worry. It does not record you did a short sale.   It normally require a 2 years waiting period to be able to purhase again with some down payment(10-20%) for Fannie-Mae backed conventional mortgage. 

It is hard to justify any home appreciation with huge Fremont manufacturing job loss in your neighborhood. I am stating with data supporting my belief. Few people will argue home prices will NOT stay at this level for the next 3-5 years.  For local data see the link:

 (http://www.trulia.com/blog/sam_shueh_1/ 

Rent has the best flexibility with no house chore.(yard & repair etc). That is worth considering.

Good luck,

Sam Shueh

[TerriM]

Two sites may help you with this decision:

First, use http://www.padmapper.com to find out what other similar houses are renting for in your area.  It pulls rental information from a variety of places like craigslist and places them on a map for you.  It somehow keeps some information on what  the "average 2BR" etc. for the area are, but take it with a grain of salt until you know how it's calculated.

Second--I haven't checked out the Forbes calculator posted earlier, but I thought this one was useful and helps with the depreciation calculations...  (pietmann, if you own or have owned rentals, do you think this calculator is addressing the costs and tax deductions appropriately?  Is there anything it's missing?)

http://www.goodmortgage.com/Calculators/Investment_Property.html