Steelhands, first- congrats! You guys are just about a month and a half ahead of us. My family (wife and 2 kids) and I are about to embark on a 14-month adventure around the US. You can read about our setup so far:
Blog for our 1-year RVing adventureTimnJo wrote:
"Sold the house last week"
Just curious what led you to that decision, DW and I are agonising over the same choice. I hate to sell an appreciating asset to acquire a depreciating one.
Setting off in our 'old' fiver, (and it will be really old by the time we're ready to pull the pin) is not my ideal plan, not that there's anything really wrong with it.
TimnJo - my wife wasn't prepared to give up our house just yet. On of our iterations of discussion was the idea of selling our house, traveling for a year, and then moving back to buy a new house. That was too much to swallow for her, so we are renting our house out for a year. We are using a property management company so after our getting the house ready for showings and then tenants, we shouldn't have to do anything but collect a check (minus property management fees of 7-10% of the rent and any repair expenses that there are). If the property management company does their job right, we shouldn't have to do anything until we are ready to come back (if we come back here).
For us, the rent is like $20/month shy of our mortgage, home owner's insurance, and homeowner's association fee. The company that we picked take 10% of the rent, so we will still be on the hook for a small monthly portion. But the amount of monthly money that it frees up is significant. In Maryland, the tenant also pays utilities which can be significant in this house.
