First Investment Property Strategy Question

[John Paul Glab]

Hello everyone. 

My wife and I have "flipped the switch" and started planing out our investment property strategy. This led us to a couple questions I hope you'll be able to help with. Thank you in advance for any insight.

We're currently living in a condo and paying off our mortgage. While doing so we've saved up enough money to start looking at our next residence. We're in the position to sell our condo and get about the same back as we have in our savings account. This brings me to our main questions. Do we use our savings as leverage on our new residence or on an investment property? Is it smarter, or even possible, to use the money we make back on our condo to buy an investment property?

Renting out the condo is not part of our plan because expenses added with our consistently increasing HOA dues won't bring in much (if any) cash flow.