Buying first Property. having 2nd thoughts... educated myself

[Brian Sullivan]

Hello BP community,

Ok, I posted on here 4 months ago asking about my first rental property I was looking at purchasing. I'm back on here to admit that I went into real estate investing with no education about real estate investing and no plan on how where I was going or how to get there. I'm now under contract to purchase said property and I'm having second thoughts. I'm having second thoughts because before I was running on hopium and now I've started to educate myself on real estate investing. I've done this through the bigger pockets podcasts and through a couple of books I've read since then. 

Before I ask my question here are the details. The property wouldn't start to make COCROI until year 5 (1.18%) and year 10 (5.07%) start to make some better cash. The cost to purchase the property (it's a brand new build) is 289,000 w/ 15% down and it's located in Florida close to the beach. My thoughts, before my light and continuing education, were if someone paid the mortgage and insurance I was using the property as a retirement fund that I would sell in 30yrs. I didn't put into account all the CapEx that would later come down the road. Now with both our incomes we wouldn't be stretched thin between the house we live in and this one but it does take away from money we could invest in future properties. Now if we left this deal we'd be leaving 11k on the table but we wouldn't have this property holding us back from future buys. If we bought it we'd have equity in the property and would be able to use that in the future.

My question is should I go through with this purchase or pop smoke and bail? I've been writing and formulating our goals (my fiance and mine) for real estate investing and this doesn't allow for us to maximize our 1 property a year at least every year. We'd have to worry about the possibility of dumping money into this possible purchase. I've come to this forum hoping that I could make sense of my choices from the BP community. Ultimately the choice is mine, but I'd hate to not use guidance from the best real estate forum out there. I know there are probably other details that might be needed and I'll produce those to help paint the investment picture for you. Thank you all in advance.

Respectfully,

Sully