Buy Primary Residence or investment real estate first?

[Rick Alvi]

Hello,

I'm a full time professional musician, I'm blessed to be able to do this for a living. But this career won't last forever and neither will my youth. I'm 29 and I'm saving every extra dime to invest in future assets so that I can one day develop a passive income stream which will help me as an artist to maintain the lifestyle I want to continue pursuing. I live in a hot market, Houston TX to be exact. I currently rent a 1bd apartment for $780 a month. I have 15-20k to invest and I'm not sure if I should buy a primary residence first (5% down due to my excellent credit) or if I should buy an investment property instead. My goal is to create passive income streams through real estate. I'm not sure if I should look in my hot market or if I should invest out of state. I hear that if I'm not owner occupying I'll have to come up with 20% down.Do you recommend I buy a SFH and rent it out first? Or buy myself a primary residence at 5% down (fix it up a bit) and then rent it out in a few years? Should I start investing now, while living in an apartment instead? I suppose I could house-hack and buy a multifamily unit, but I'll probably need a property manager to help me the first year to learn the ropes. I also don't know if I can afford much in my current market area. There are single family homes 3bd 2bth that go for 95-115k but a lot of the multi-families cost a lot more.