1st time buyer: Owner Occupant or Rent

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Okay, so I ended up starting two threads in one day but while I was stressing over where I'm gonna end up living 3 months from now:

I feel like I'm having such a hard time deciding on what I want to do because I always thought the best way to own a property just starting out with little cash is to be an owner occupant. You get better rates and you get tax breaks. But the hard part is I want to live in a nice area and nice areas tend to be much harder to get positive cash flow (assuming I imagine I'm paying myself normalized rent prices for that area).

If cash flow is so important, which it is to me since I'm basically trying to build up capital for future investments, maybe it's better if I rent some place cheap with friends and buy a less expensive property in an area I don't want to live (really south when I'm trying to stay closer north). Because where "I" want to live is becoming a determining factor in what properties I'm willing to invest in while if I just decide to rent, I can simply invest purely on the numbers.

But the real question is do the benefits from being an owner tenant outweigh the expansion of my investment opportunities?