New investor, 26 y/o, needs some real estate advice!

[Kevin Martin]

I am new to bigger pockets as well as real estate investing. Based on what I have seen so far on bigger pockets this seems to be the right place to ask around and see what the professionals(or at least people with much more experience than me) have to say. I wanted some advice/thoughts on my plan.

I am a 26 year old looking to start investing in real estate. I have no real world RE experience except for all the education I have been seeking on bigger pockets and other places. I am a newly licensed general contractor as well as a structural/geotechnical engineer(this is my 9 to 5 job).

My main goal is to have as many rental properties that I own free and clear to create a steady amount of monthly cash flow. Being a contractor, I know I could probably fix and flip or do something along those lines to put more money in my pocket but I don't know if I have time to deal with the stress of my day job as well as trying to flip houses.

Here is my plan.....so far. Lol

I am going to design/build my own brand new house at cost. Lets just say I already have the land and a private investor is putting up all the money to build it(this will only happen once). So I should have instant equity in my house as soon as its completed (assuming I can build it for less than what I could sell it for when its done). The problem is that this won't happen for about a year from now and I need a place to live in the meantime.

I am tired of throwing money away on rent and would rather buy. The plan is to buy something cheap, live in it until my house is complete, fix it up if needed as I go, and rent it out when I move into my new house. I am shooting for a mortgage payment of about half of what I could get for renting.

I do not want to buy something now if its going to ruin my chances of getting a loan for the house I am building. The loan will be just to pay the private investor for what they paid to build it.

I make great money with my day job and have excellent credit. The only downside I can see from a banks view when qualifying for my new house is that I am young with a small mortgage already. Maybe this whole post is a question for a lender but I just wanted to see what the "big dogs" think?

Should I buy a place to live in it temporarily with the intention of it becoming an investment property after I move into my new built house?

Should I tell a bank all this or just tell them I want to buy a house and need a loan for the first property? (I know lenders usually have a time frame you must live in the house.)

Sorry for the extra long question but everybody gotta start somewhere. Thanks for reading all this if you even made it this far. Haha