First flip just sold, now what?!

[Stephen Barnabei]

Hello everyone! I'm a contractor and very new to real estate investing. I bought my first home two years ago as a primary residence and fixed it up slowly one room at a time. I only kept rough numbers on my costs and just hoped to make some profit for my sweat equity to sell and buy an bigger and better home next. Bought it for 80k- got full sellers assist, put about 20k in materials and did all the work by myself. It just sold for 129k, I know, not much profit especially after the selling fee's I didn't think about in the beginning but I learned a lot.

Now I'll have some cash to invest after settlement but I'm not sure which direction to go. I thought I wanted to flip but I realize on the last one I paid too much and the home in that area ARV weren't high enough. This time I could buy a house cheaper than 80k in an area with a better school district that the after repair value is higher like 180k. I've been scouting Homes for months now. Keeping and eye on what's new to the market, what banks starting price are at first and then what it actually sells for.

I'm realizing fast that the best  deals are cash deals and I can't low ball with a conventional financed bank loan. I'm pre approved currently because I have great credit, have cash and decent income.

I don't know if I should buy with a bank loan with a higher mortgage or get a hard money loan and buy something cheap cash and then sell it in a few months.

I have a few invester friends and they all have different strategies.

We are in a sellers market currently so my one friend fixes and flips, another one gets a HML-fixes-rents and then refinances in 6 months with a bank to pay off the hard money loan.

Another friend says never use your own money so he gets a loan for a property, fixes it, rents it, pulls the equity out with a home equity loan and buys another and another and so on.

My latest friend that would like to be my mentor, likes to own cheap properties flat out in bad areas near where I live. He buying homes with his own cash for 10k, fixing them himself for 10k in material with the cheapest daily laborers and renting them out section 8 for $800/month and he has 20 properties and just maintains them full time and thinks I should do the same.

Not sure which route to take, I'd like to flip one for a profit while we are in a sellers market then get a rental and got back and forth each project because I need to accumulate rentals to retire one day with the residual income.

Sorry for the length of this post, it's my first time posting and trying to get you enough info, thanks in advance for any replys.