First time buyer suggestions

[Amanda Dantés]

Hi BP community! My husband and I just got preapproved for a home loan with the bank and now I am stuck with trying to figure out what the best move would be. We live in Southern California which is extremely expensive. We got approved for around 500,000 dollars with using my income alone because my husband is starting a business and hasn’t been with it for long enough etc, and we kind of wanted to keep one of our lines of credit open for our next purchase. Anyways, when looking at the market in Southern California there really isn’t many options in that price range, and the ones that are available have already been rehabbed. We would ideally like to house hack and purchase a multi family home, but again the inventory is extremely low to non existent. After reading the forums on BP I started to look at investing out of state. Prices are much lower, and the cash flow on some spots seem to make sense. But I’m unsure how my preapproval for a single family home will change going out of state. I guess I just want to make sure we are set up to purchase another property later no matter which way we decide to go (purchase live in single family home now, find multi family now, or purchase investment out of state). The live in single family option here in Southern California might stop us from being able to rent it later for good cash flow only because prices are so high. Sorry I know this is a lot of information, just looking for some suggestions from others who understand/ have been there/ or might have some other avenues I haven’t explored. Thank you so much!