Buying a home for parent to begin RE investing

[Nathan Whitworth]

Hi everyone! Just joined BP - and have learned so much in such a short time!

My wife and I are beginning the journey of RE investing. Since my mom isn't able to get financing for her own home, we figured she would be a fantastic 1st tenant for us to begin the process of becoming investors. We're wanting to purchase a home for her as well as purchase at least one other property to rent out within the next 6 months. I have a few questions & wanted to see if anyone had advice on how best to proceed. 

1. Will the purchase of the property for my mother hurt the ability for us to buy another rental property soon after? Right now, we're planning on using conventional financing to purchase the property as a second home, renting it to her for under market value, and then we'd sell it or rent at market value when she no longer needs it. 

2. Would a good option be to find an owner financing deal for one of the properties? Would it make it easier/harder to acquire the second property if we did the owner financing first?

3. If you've purchased a property as a second home and then rented it out to a relative, do you have any advice? We know that people warn against renting to a relative, but we feel very comfortable renting it to her. 

4. If we're also looking to trade in our car at some point during the process, is there a more ideal time to do that?

Thanks anyone for any potential insight you can give!