<prompt> Human: My wife and I bought a townhouse 5 years ago that we are debating renting, or possibly selling, because we have a new place to live on her uncles property. Well have a nice new home up there for 600.00month utilities.Now, heres the deal. My wife says she wants to sell if we cant rent the townhouse out in a way that it 100 pays for itself. She says there can be absolutely no cost to us or else its a terrible investment. I disagree. Im really not sure who is right, but let me lay out the arguments.Why I think its okay if it doesnt pay for itself:With mortgage and strata fees, its roughly 1100month for us to own this place. Lets presume we were only able to get a renter for 1000.00month utilities paid by renter, leaving us 100.00 short. Not to mention there will be increased insurance fees, property tax changes since it wont be our primary residence, etc. Things like utilities and maintenance we paid before and will continue paying at our new place, so I dont figure we need to factor that in. Lets say roughly were about 300.00month under what we need to pay for this place and include necessary maintenance and updates--we went from paying 1100.00mo to now paying 600.00month. So that 300.00 can be made up by us paying out of pocket since were living so cheaply, and well still have extra money to put into savings. Meanwhile, the mortgage is almost being completely covered by someone else, and therefore down the road when we do sell well be much better off.In my wifes argument, she feels strongly that if you have to pay into your home at all while theres a renter, its a bad investment. Even when presented with a scenario as above granted we havent budgeted out exact numbers, she feels that that extra money we have from living cheaply should not be used to pay for the townhouse. She would rather sell. Currently if we sold the place at the going rate, we would basically break even and owe nothing. We would cut our 1100.00 mortgagestrata costs into 600.00, and have in theory around 500 bucks a month extra to pay other loans or put it into savings. But our real estate investment is then gone.Which makes more sense?TL;DR: We have an opportunity to live cheaply and rent out townhouse, but might not be able to have it pay for itself. Is it still worthwhile to rent and cover the extra costs out of pocket, or sell and break even?Edit: Thanks for all the good points and things we havent really considered. One thing I didnt outline in my original post was that we also both pay into student loans and a line of credit. Were we to pay those off easier to do if weve sold, wed be freeing up another 500 bucks a month to use for investingsavings. Our net income between the two of us is about 5500month, and our expenses would be very minimal with just 600 dollar rent and utilities. No more property taxes, just renters insurance.Edit2: So many great points! Im leaning towards my wife being right on this one unfortunately for me, thats typical. I think in the long run wed come out on top either way, so well have to do more exact numbers to try to get a better idea. Also note, the thing about these units is that while they arent renting for a ton, they rent out so easily being right next to a local college. That said... thats yet another down-side, where Id be dealing with the come-and-go nature of student renters, so itd be a lot of extra work. I think its a toss-up about which way would allow us to be better off financially in the long-run. These townhouses have sold in the past for as high as 280,000 and are now selling for under 200,000. That makes me think theres potential for it to achieve that value again, but depreciation has been the trend. Lots to think about.Assistant: The big question: how much would the property sell for?See here for more detail on investment properties: Human: Property would sell for around 185,000, so by that logic it should renting for 1850mo, which is pretty insane for where I live average house costs around 500k here. I had actually seen that link in my research but where we live is one of the top 3 most expensiveunlivable markets in Canada.  <response>: Talk to a rental agent, maybe you can rent it out for way more than you think you can 