It depends on how much time you have to spend. Renting can take up a lot of time. You have to find renters, keep it rented, hope the renters don't cause any trouble, uptake the properties... Unless you have enough profit to pay someone to manage it for you, it may be better to just resell the houses if you can get a quick and large profit instantly.
I have never flipped a home, but have heard that it can be quite a challange because of the speed in which you have to do it. I have heard that it is best to get the house ready for market before the first mortgage payment is due or you start to lose money when you have to make the monthly payments.
Rentals are far less risky than flipping houses. It's a constant stream of income and not really all that time consuming if the maintenance is kept up with on the property. I think about the house I've rented from for the past 3 years and our landlord has probably been over to the house 5 times during that span. With good tenants and a good system in place for collecting rent, it's almost something you can forget about most of the time and just collect the monthly income. Flipping on the other hand is a tremendous time and money sink that requires a good amount of luck to flip the house in a certain amount of time. And if it doesn't sell, you're sitting on a huge investment of money that is just wasting away.
I think that it is a great idea to have that cash flow coming in on a monthly basis. Especially, if you are approaching retirement age. When you flip houses at times you have to be careful not to lose your investment and that you are profitable. However, it does not matter if you invest for the long term or short-term it is important to do the proper analysis and run the numbers with variable factors. Including interest rates, occupancy declines, and market price forecasting (highs and lows) over the next 5 years. I really love the idea that you would like to pay for the properties completely to be able to keep the majority of the cash flow. You do not want a mortgage to be sucking up all of your cash flow.
Best not to sell your property unless it doesn't generate the kind of money you expected. However if you choose a good location which tenants will like then I'd suggest buying the property and renting out for as long as you live. It will provide all the money you need to live comfortably after you retire. Flipping in order to get money for retirement isn't all that great an idea because once you have the money, next thing you'd is try to invest it. So why not make the investment [rental houses/property] early and forget about trying to find the right investment after you retire?
Renting is the safer choice, even if it can become a bit of a hassle if you have to handle any problems that turn up. If you attempt to sell the properties, you run the risk of either not managing to sell and getting stuck with it, or being forced to sell for either a value that doesn't give you profit or getting extremely low profits, either case isn't desirable obviously.
I think that the ultimate endgame is rental. When you have a lot of property to rent out you have a stable income which you don't have to necessarily work to get basically you're making money as you sleep. So for me this is the ideal kind of investment. But I think there are few steps that you have to take. Firstly out say you should go for rentals. Once you making a certain amount of rental, consider selling the various amounts of properties that you have. The reason you would sell a vast amount of properties is so that you can on big up property with more rentals. Ultimately the aim is to get as many people renting from you as possible. That way you generate a lot of passive income.
Rental is a steady source of income as long as you have the ability to continually maintain the property while renting it. Also I'd say that if you're going to become a landlord then you should take the time to learn more about how a landlord works and what sort of things a landlord would have to do as a property owner and maintainer.
I am planning to buy an apartment for renting. I prefer renting as it is a steady source of income as the previous poster mentioned. In addition, in bigger cities you will always find someone to rent the apartment for. In addition, it will keep its value and you are able to sell it later even for profit.
Flipping generally raises real estate prices in an area more rapidly than the economy can take in the long run which creates a real estate bubble which then creates a real estate crash. I am totally against flipping homes in the traditional manner in which its done. Rental is the way to go.
