Relocated Homeowners Weigh Renting Out Current Home

A tough real estate market coupled with a tough job market means more people need to sell their homes at a price they may not want to take for a job that they need to take.

This new reality complicates the sell-a-house/buy-a-new-house paradigm that has been the norm for relocated employees. Sellers are weighing their options, asking whether they should take what they can get in a market that may not be as generous as they would like, or hang onto their home and go into the landlord business, as they wait out a market they hope will improve.

The right decision depends on a lot of factors, the most important of which is a determination of what is happening in the seller's local market, said Mitchell Hochberg, principal of Madden Real Estate Ventures, which advises residential and commercial real estate developers.

"The real estate market is a very local market," he said. "The homeowner needs to look at the trends in selling to see where the market is now: how any houses have been sold, in what price range. Find out if your market has started to turn the corner, and what it looks like over the next couple of years."