Looking for pro advice/mentoring on next steps

[Jordan Budke]

I'm located in a rural area of north San Diego County in a town called Fallbrook. My wife of 2.5 years and I were blessed to be able to purchase our 1bd 1bth 729 sqft condo back in 2020 for $220k. The market now has a value of around $400k if we desired to sell, but we do not. We'd prefer to hold this property as an LTR. We would like to begin the next phase of building a portfolio by purchasing another property but as you can imagine, prices in our market are exponentially high. In fact, we would like to upgrade from the condo but there's no way to do that without purchasing a house for $600k+ which is way, way, way out of our reach. 

Where I need help is what to do next. As a newbie, I am stuck at this phase of the process. I want to figure out a way to upgrade into an upgraded primary while ideally keeping the condo we have now. For context on income: I work full-time as a Pest Control Inspector making about $50k and my wife works under the table as a nanny. Not amazing credit. I was unemployed for much of 2022 but have now been employed for a few months. (A refi would remove our 3% interest which I don't really want to do. A HELOC may not be possible because of my credit.)

What can I do to begin building a path to get out of this condo and into a bigger place for our primary residence while also building a rental portfolio in the meantime? Or should I figure out a way to flip? Out-of-state stuff? Or what other methods and strategies can a guy in my position benefit from? I sort of feel like I'm in desperation mode. I could use a hand. 

Sincerely appreciated!!