Invest in personal home addition or first investment property

[William Hull]

SO here is my situation, hopefully someone can give me a bit of direction.

I purchased my primary residence in Dec, 2017 and am currently sitting on around 250k in equity. I have about 60-70k liquid cash on hand and just over 100K in my 401k. My wife and I are very interested into purchasing our first investment property in 2023 and we are here to put that dream into a plan and make it a reality. Our dilemma is that our home is too small and we are in need of an addition, we love where we live in NJ and dont prefer to relocate especially with the current interest rates. We are unsure how to use our funds and need some help on what you would do in my situation. We are not sure if its right to spend the money on our own home and build more equity and pull in after our addition or just bite the bullet and wait to add on after purchasing our first/ second/ third rental property.

My wife and I both have good paying W2 jobs but also pay 3k/month for two kids in daycare full time. I also am a Master Electrical Contractor with extensive experience in renovations and building in general. This being said, I can do a renovation at a fraction of the cost with my contacts and experience with General Contracting.

I am very interested in flipping and hard money loans since this could be right up my alley, the only issue I have is the time I wouldn’t be able to put into a flip since I live an extremely busy- hamster wheel lifestyle.

Any suggestions or help to give us some ideas on a direction to head in would be greatly appreciated.

From MONMOUTH COUNTY, NJ