Buying 1st Investment Property

[Brittanii J Lehman]

We are buying our 1st Investment property.  It's one side of a duplex, 3 bed, 2.5 bath, 2000sq ft., located in a desirable neighborhood.  The plan is to buy it with a conventional loan with 20% down, have our family live in it for a year, move out, and then use it as a rental.  We plan on spending around $15,000 in improvements - updating the property. It should rent for $1200/month.

I am having the hardest time deciding what the best option is for a loan on this property. An investment loan would require the 20% down, which we are getting from a HELOC on our current house, but the investment property interest rate is 5.99%. So thats why we decided to just live in it for a year, so we can get an interest rate of 4.625%. Is that the best way to do it, or should we just go ahead and buy it as an investment property and pay the 5.99% and immediately rent it out? Also, I was just listening to a podcast about new tax options for real esate investors. Can we do cost segregation on a personal use property or does it have to be a investment property? If we were to live in this property for a year, it would be considered a personal use property.

Ugh...please give me some advice...I'm so afraid of making the wrong decision, that would end up costing us more, if we miss out on possible tax deductions or interest rates....🤦🏽♀️.