Flip or Muti Family House Hack

[Maurice Lyle]

I’m looking for a bit of advice, seems I have a slight dilemma. I'm currently on the market for a home in NJ. I was leasing an apartment on the Hudson with views of the Statue of Liberty and NYC skyline for close to $4000 per month. I've decided once my lease is up I would not renew. Going forward I would like to pocket some or possibly all of that money and use it to invest in RE. My ideal situation would be to house hack a 3 or 4 family home and use the money I'm saving by house hacking to get a second home and apply the brrrr strategy. I've been using the calculators to evaluate potential deals for the house hack. However it seems likes the best deals are in neighborhoods I wouldn't necessarily want to live in even if it’s only for a year or so. Also when I do come across good deals in ok areas the house tends to go a little quicker than I can get my contractor to check out the property. I work full time so I don't have a lot of time to spare. The second option would be to do a flip. It seems like it may be easier, I can't say I'm sure about that being this is my first go round but my realtor mentioned a single family fixer upper may be easier to come across than a nice priced multi-family because a lot of people are looking to house hack.

So the question is, should I hold out for my ideal situation as far as the house hack is concerned or do I just attempt to do the flip? By the way I'm financing using the 203k loan. Any advice would be extremely helpful.