Utterly confused and need advice

[Sherry G.]

My husband and I currently live in NYC and are relocating to Los Angeles and we need real estate/ general financial planning advice.  One of our financial goals is to invest in real estate that will provide good cash flow in the future so we are not totally dependent on our current combined income. We own a coop in the NYC which we purchased two years ago. If we rent it today it will be just under cash flow neutral. Initially, our thought process was to sell this property and take our savings to buy a  4-6 unit multi-family in Los Angeles and occupy one of the units until we save for a down payment for a home. After looking at redfin/loopnet for a couple of months I am starting to get discouraged about what if anything our money can buy in LA and am starting to think that we should hold onto our NYC coop and buy something smaller in LA like a duplex, town home, condo that we would live in until we buy a home. Any advice would be much appreciated. I've been spinning my wheels for months and do not know what we should do. Please note the following considerations:

1. In both scenarios we are waiting to buy our home last because my husband is concerned that buying a home now will make it difficult to save for the investment property i.e. cost of furniture, maintenance of home, mortgage, etc.... Please let me know if you disagree.

2. We currently do not own anything in Los Angeles and so we have to figure out when/what to buy and whether we should rent while trying to figure everything out. Only annoying this is that rents on apts/condos/town homes are pretty much equivalent to a mortgage on the same.

Thank you in advance.