Sell or keep renting second property

My husband and I bought our first home at the height of the boom in 2006 for 360k. We moved out in 2019 and bought our current family home. We have about 165k remaining on the original mortgage (tracker currently 4%) and are getting about €1950 per month rent (repayments are 1695 a month, overpaying a little). We’re trying to decide whether we should sell now and pay a chunk off our primary residence mortgage and maybe put some money into pensions or hold on to it. With tax and maintenance we are not making any money on it so our feeling is that we should sell.

Have a look though the money makeover forum


Many posts like yours. It's likely some combination of selling and paying off mortgage/investing in a pension would be the recommended outcome but to get a tailored answer you would need to provide more details.

Lots of previous threads on this question...

Here’s a way of analysing this issue -

TBH, we used to get this question a lot a few years ago but not so often these days - because the answer is nearly always sell the rental and apply the cashed out home equity against the PPR mortgage.

But you need to run the figures for your individual circumstances.

I have just sold a rental property. I’m going to put money off my ppr mortgage and top up the pension AVC’s etc.

Sarenco said:

but not so often these days

Click to expand...

Maybe as rates come down for those on tracker mortgages there’s more of an incentive to stay the course.

In the meantime with continually rising prices almost no one will sell for less than what they paid for a property at the top of the market in 2006-08. That’s a big psychological barrier for many.

Obvious Reasons to sell are Hassle lack of diversification
I'd say definitely sell if you are not maxing out pensions currently and need the extra cash to fund buy as others said toy should probably do a fuller ass depending on your specific situation and finances, plans for the future

I have also set out a systematic approach to the question here

Thank you all - I’ll take a look at those threads and work out the numbers but I’m leaning towards selling as I was working part time the last few years and not putting much into pensions