Pay off my house or invest in another property?

[Eric Hansen]

I am 25 years old and I recently closed a deal on my first house, last Monday actually! Exciting for me. I got the house for $31800 with a 10% down payment so I still owe $28620 with an interest rate of 4.42% (that can be adjusted in 5 years), and a monthly payment of $179.90. The house is in Arkansas City, Kansas, a town of about 12,000, and home to a very successful community college. There are also several rural towns within about twenty miles so there is a decent amount of economic traffic from those towns. One piece of important information, my fiance attends the community college in Arkansas City and her and I are living in the house. We will live there until July 2018, at which time she will transfer from the community college to a bigger four year school. I would like to use the house as a rental property at that time. I believe I can get $550/month for the house in rent. The taxes and insurance combined on the house are currently around $100.

I make an income of about $52,000 as an educator so I am pretty flexible on where I work as far as what city. With the extra income from my full-time job, and if my calculations are correct (which they are) I could have the house paid off at exactly the time we move out in July 2018. So in other words, over the next 22 months or so I will have about $26,000 in extra income. My question is, should my goal be to put that 26K towards the house that I am living in and have it paid off OR should I use that money to obtain another deal or two in that 22 months time OR do a combination of the two?

First time poster, any suggestions or solutions would be awesome!