Learning about REI with a little Fork in the Road

[Nelson Maldonado]

I am a 30 y.o. Mathematics teacher in Hudson County, NJ and I currently rent an apartment with my wife (also a Math teacher). We were blessed to have a little baby to enter our lives early this year. During this pandemic, we were given tons of time to reflect on life, self, and investments. Growing up we both came from families with generational poverty and are breaking these generational trends.  My wife and I both are interested heavily into investing in real estate buy and hold properties and are ready to jump into the action. We have spent the past year saving and researching as much as we can.  However, with the Baby now in our lives our journey has hit a fork in the road. 

Our major fork in our plan moving forward is: 

1. SFH for our family and choose to establish roots for our little family. (Delay the process of investing a calculated 3 years)

2. Continue with the plan of investing. 

Was wondering if anyone had a similar situation and their outcomes or started later in investing and turned out just fine?

[Nelson Maldonado]

Originally posted by @Jonathan Greene:

Keep in mind that the first house you might buy for the family will most likely not be the forever home so you could buy a small house that you plan to keep as an investment when you grow out of it. You could do the same with a condo. Family should always be first and it's not ideal to house hack with a baby because you have adjoining tenants that you are responsible for and a little baby that could bother tenants with no soul. It depends if you guys want to stay in Hudson or move out a bit with the baby.

 Jonathan, 

Thanks for the insight. I agree that house hacking with a newborn, even with the most accepting tenants, isn't ideal. Thinking of our first home as an investment property for the future is a very feasible idea. We never thought of the condo route, although it can be an option assuming the association does not have terrible renting restrictions. If we do go with the SFH route, we may be leaving Hudson County to neighboring counties Essex, Bergen, and Passaic to name a few. Ideally, convenient to 46 or 3.