Selling to buy one house or two

[Codie Wintrode]

Hello,

My husband and I own a home just outside of Phoenix AZ, in the town of Queen Creek. We believe we can sell for about $530,000. We owe $415,500. We want to start getting into investment real estate and build passive income with single family home rentals. Our question is this, when we sell, should we put all our equity into one primary residence. (About $180,000-200,000) or split it up and buy one primary residence and one rental property.

We have a fairly good income and figure if we bought one house and threw extra money at it that we would have it paid off in about 2 years. At which point we could turn it into a rental and buy another primary residence.

Or do we buy two let renters pay down the mortgage on one and pay down the primary house a little slower?

Thanks for any advice!