Advice for a new guy

[Kurt Smith]

Hello All,

I've been doing a bit of reading and decided to finally join BP and start asking some questions. My wife and I are in our late 20's and early 30's, and we're excitedly talking about getting started in REI. Right now we're trying to learn as much as we can and decide on the best way for us to move forward. I wanted to get some input from more minds than just ours, so here are my goals/questions:

Our current situation is that we live in a house recently appraised for $160k and owe ~$110k on a 15 yr mortgage at 3.75%. The house is in a neighborhood with much higher than average $/sq ft than the rest of our city (Little Rock, AR). Right now we want to accomplish two things: 1. Move to a larger house in a "less expensive" neighborhood (~$215k), 2. Obtain our first (hopefully of many) rental property (~$120k) on the way to generating some long-term cash flow.

The foremost question on my mind is what to do with our current house. Do we try to sell it and use the proceeds (along with some of our $30k in cash savings) as a down payment on the two new properties, or keep it as our first rental property? If we decided to rent it, we would have to refinance it with a 30-yr loan in order to be in a positive cash flow position (similar houses in the area rent for ~$1100 and our monthly note is currently $1200 including tax and insurance). Should we consider a cash-out refinance or home equity loan in order to buy our next residence (and put us closer to a second rental property)? Keeping the property would make moving to our next residence a little easier, and may make property management easier since there won't be any surprises in the condition of the house. However, if the numbers don't make sense, I'm not committed to keeping it.

Right now I'm reading through Gary Keller's The Millionaire Real Estate Investor and William Nickerson's How I Turned $1000 into Five Million in Real Estate. I'm afraid of getting stuck in "analysis paralysis" and never taking our first step towards REI. I'd really appreciate any input or advice. Thanks!

-Kurt