What would be your play?

[Jose D.]

I've been going back and forth about making this post because I didn't want to come off like I'm trying to be spoonfed. But then I remembered that getting advice and bouncing ideas off people is what this place is all about. So here it is.

We've kind of "acquired" a rental property recently. Not a traditional acquisition but more of a gift/inheritance (not a death or anything morbid like that). It's our current residence but we are planning to move out in less than a year. My question is, with one rental property in your backpocket what would your next move be? The current plan is to get a HomeReady loan as first time homebuyers, upgrade to a nicer house in a nicer neighborhood without going overboard (going from current 140k house to 175k range)*, using our current residence which can rent for 1k-1.2k to pay off the mortgage on the new house, save then reinvest in another property. One year occupancy, refinancing the FannieMae loan, then moving to another home is also a possibility since neither of us see this next home as our forever home. Combined yearly income of 110-120k. No multi-family as much as it pains me to pass on the househacking benefits they provide. We have too many pets for that, and have plans for children in the near future.

I was already interested in real estate before, but was looking at other strategies with the assumption that we didn't yet have a rental property and that our current residence would remain our current residence for at least another 5 years. I feel like we were incredibly fortunate to "acquire" this first rental property and want to take advantage of it. I think our current plan is solid but just looking for suggestions/advice to make sure there aren't any good options/routes that we haven't considered.

*house values on Zillow