1st investment property: USDA or FHA

[Louis Luciano]

Hello BP community. My wife and I are planning our first big RE investment. We are debating between using a USDA loan for a live in flip or using an FHA loan for a multi-family property. We are located in Charlotte, NC, and here is some back story to help encourage professional opinions. As of right now My wife is a full time student at UNCC scheduled to graduate in December of this year (Woohoo!!) as of right now I am the only source of income for our family ( we have two little ones as well.) We have been saving what we can and educating ourselves in order to make the best financial decision but we are torn because... I really want to go ahead and get pre approved for an FHA loan in order to buy a house hack, but we are still working on saving capital and due to our budget limitations, I am fearful that in order to get approved we will have to wait until my wife has two years of income under her belt and both of us can be on the loan and we can do our first house hack. On the other hand I have researched USDA loan option here In NC which would allow us to make our first investment (live in flip) by the beginning on 2019 with just my income. We both are fairly handy and have connections to family members who would be a big help in the renovation process, considering we would have a minimum of a year to make the proper renovations. One of my unfavorable characteristics is that I can be a tad impatient. I do not want to wait until we have more money saved up and my wife has her work history before we make our move, but I also want to be sure that if we do make a move it is a smart and calculated one. Which would you guys suggest given the little bit of information here on this post? Thank You in advance!!