Should You Rent or Sell Your Condo? How to Decide During the Great Condo Reset

By Brian Maser, Founder & Broker, The Condo Experts | October 2026

The question I’m hearing most right now isn’t “what’s my condo worth?” It’s this:

“I need to sell, but I feel like I’m taking a loss. Should I just rent it out and wait?”

I understand that feeling. Let me give you a better way to decide than a feeling.

First, the hard truth about “taking a loss”

What you paid, what your neighbor sold for in 2022, what your unit was “worth” last spring: the market doesn’t know any of those numbers, and it doesn’t care.

In the Great Condo Reset, the loss you’re trying to avoid has mostly already happened. Waiting doesn’t undo it. The only question is whether waiting makes it bigger or smaller.

Here’s the test I give every owner: if you had the cash today, would you buy this condo at today’s price? If the answer is no, you’re not holding an investment. You’re holding hope.

The rent-or-sell math

When an owner is weighing this, we run five numbers:

1. What you walk away with today. Sale price, minus your loan payoff, minus selling costs.

2. What renting really costs you. Rent coming in, minus mortgage, HOA, taxes, insurance, repairs, plus vacancy and management.

3. What the market does while you wait. If values keep sliding, that comes out of your equity.

4. What your building might charge you. Dues increases and special assessments. CondoNAV shows this risk.

5. What your equity could be earning elsewhere. Money sitting in a condo isn’t working anywhere else.

The cost of waiting = rental shortfall + value change + assessment risk + lost return on your equity

If that number is bigger than what you’d give up by selling now, waiting is costing you.

An example (illustrative numbers, not a specific property)

A $900,000 condo with $400,000 in equity, rented for $4,200 a month:

• Monthly costs: about $5,600, covering mortgage, HOA, taxes, insurance, repairs, and vacancy/management.

• Cash shortfall: about $16,700 a year, or roughly $10,700 after the principal you pay down.

• Another 5% value decline: $45,000.

• Lost return on $400,000 at 4%: $16,000.

One year of waiting: about $72,000. That’s before a single special assessment.

And renting won’t bail you out. Rents in Los Angeles are down 1.3% over the past year, and nationally, condo rents are falling while dues and insurance keep rising.

When renting does make sense

• You can cover the shortfall comfortably, for years.

• Your building is close to fixing its compliance gaps, so waiting could open up a wider buyer pool later.

• You’re holding for the long term, not trying to “get back to even.”

If renting is the right call, do it right. The Condo Experts has a full professional leasing division. We price your rental to the market, find and screen qualified tenants, and handle the lease from start to finish, so your condo works as an investment instead of a headache.

A real example from this week

A lot of owners choose to rent because they think a buyer can’t get financed in their building. That fear is often wrong.

This week we put 1101 Lincoln Blvd, Unit 5 into escrow in one week, with multiple lenders competing to finance the buyer. CondoNAV analyzes the building, and our lending program matches it with the right lender and loan. If financing is the only thing stopping you, call us.

How to make the decision

1. Know your building at CondoNAV.com.

2. Get your rent-or-sell analysis. Send us your address and your monthly expenses: mortgage, HOA, taxes, insurance, and repairs. We run them through our rent-or-sell formulas, send you the full analysis, and review it with you, side by side.

3. Choose your path, and do it right:
   
   

   • Selling: Sell with The Condo Experts, using the Pre-Packaged Condo Sale™.

   • Renting: Lease with The Condo Experts.

Either way, we’ve got you.