Working towards our “why”

[NA H.]

Hi! My spouse and I are trying to figure out our next steps and would appreciate any advice. We are new to real estate investing and trying to figure out if it would be better to buy a home in our area or focus on building up an out of state portfolio. Our end goal and “why” is to be able to move our family to some acreage and raise our kids on a little hobby farm. One acre with a fixer upper is currently around $400k-$500k+ and the monthly payment for that amount just stretches us too thin right now.

-we currently own a home and have a $75k Heloc available to tap into. The mortgage is $1100/mo and will rent for around $1900/mo whenever we decide to move. 

Option 1: buy another “starter” home for around $375k and plan to live in it for around 5 years while renting out the current house. Hopefully by the end of that time frame, it will have appreciated enough that we can sell it and use the equity as a down payment on some acreage while still keeping the first house as a rental.

Option 2: stay where we are and use the heloc to invest in rental properties out of state like Kansas City, Cleveland, etc. Over the next few years continue to buy a few more properties to build up the monthly cash flow then use the increased income to buy our acreage property.

Our area is projected to continue to grow and appreciate fairly quickly so we are afraid of getting priced out of buying our little farm if we wait too long. What would you do in our situation? Any other ideas or food for thought? Thank you for your advice and taking the time to read this!