Purchasing an investment property as first home while renting

[Jacob Kidwell]

Hello! This is my first post on the BP forums! I have been in the research and learning phase of my real estate investment journey for about a year now and I am ready to move to the next step and make my first purchase. I graduated college in 2019 and have been renting for my primary residence ever since. For various reasons I believe I will be better off purchasing a rental property before I purchase a home to live in. My two primary thoughts for this rationale are; 

1. My wife and I are very unsure about where we want to live, both of our careers will allow us to move basically anywhere. We appreciate the flexibility that renting allows us vs owning at this time.

2. If I establish a successful rental property before I purchase a home to live in, the mortgage for the rental property will be paid for by rental income and will not affect my debt to income ratio when applying for an additional mortgage. If I purchase a primary residence first than that mortgage payment would make it difficult to apply for a second mortgage for a rental property. 

I am curious to see what an experienced investor thinks about this rationale/plan. I am also curious if anyone has experience with obtaining financing for an investment property before their first home? Will I be able to leverage any first time home buyer benefits without the property being my primary residence? Will I have to use a standard investment loan with at least 20% down? 

Any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated!