I was trained to hit the person if they refused to keep still , and were pulling me down with them . <| sep |> Not sure if I missed something but it seems obvious . You ' re clearing $ 200 a month on an effective investment of 25 k . That ' s a return of 9 . 6 % not even taking into account how much you ' re paying down against the principle . Unless you owe some huge credit card debt or a loan shark I think your best bet is to hold the house . That being said rental houses are a diminishing return . As the mortgage gets paid down the return on your equity drops . When you can sell the house and clear 100 k now suddenly $ 2400 a year is only a 2 . 4 % return on investment . Of course that ' s still ignoring the principle payments so its not a fair comparison . Edit To add my own experience , about 12 years ago I sold my first house . I wanted to keep it and rent it out but my ex wanted the cash to furnish our newer larger house 0 % down so we didn ' t need the cash for a down payment I still regret not fighting her more on it . At this point the house would have been paid off and providing me an income after expenses of ~$ 1500 a month or about 5 % return on investment house is worth about 350 k now but we sold for 220 k