Guide a Newbie to Wealth

[Account Closed]

Hi guys,

I am a younger guy, about 2 years out of college. I am heavily considering buying myself a loft/condo type of home (as a personal property). It will come out to be roughly what I currently pay in rent per month. And I qualified for a very low down payment. 

My pros on this property: I personally like the home (as I should since this will at least temporarily be my primary residence), It offers me some personal advantages as far as location to various amenities (including my job), I'm in a market (Atlanta) that is growing in value very rapidly, so I believe its somewhat safe to say I shouldn't anticipate losing money (although I recognize a market crash can happen anywhere), did I mention ridiculously good location? (literally 3-5 minute walk from the newly developed falcons stadium). I am thinking I could stay with my girlfriend and rent this property out via airBNB a couple weekends during the football season. I'm not sure on proper pricing but I'm guessing I could probably manage to cover my mortgage a couple months out of the year. I also think this would be a GREAT property to rent out once I move on to my next home, which leads me to my concerns....

Here are my concerns: I want to build wealth, am I removing the opportunity to invest in something by already owning? Will I find it hard to purchase a 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th property (or first "income" property more specifically)? Obviously being young I do not have a huge nest egg saved up for 20% down-payments on multi-unit homes. So I am wondering, will I have the opportunity to buy again for another low down payment? Will a bank give me another big loan in 2 years for my next property? 

I want to begin a road to passive income, however I also want to have a nice place for myself. My rental lease is up at the end of august, I'm prequalified and prepared to buy, I feel like now is as good of a time as any. I just don't want to make a mistakenly self-indulgent purchase and remove some long term financial flexibility for myself in the future. 

Basically, I want the home, and nothing about it seems like a "bad" investment. However I am curious, how many of you have had success in real estate investing, while having little savings and ALREADY owning a mortgage? A lot of advice I see around the internet in regards to investing is "make the right deals happen" (in terms of ROI, LTV, etc...) well unfortunately a lot of "deals" cost a considerable amount of money up-front. Thoughts?

[Austin Fruechting]

As far as qualifying in the future for an investment property and the personal residence: banks will look at either your mortgage or you monthly rent payment, so either way there will be a housing amount deducted for your income qualifications. So if they are similar amounts it won't change your qualifications.  

To jumpstart investing career though, you should look into "house-hacking"