Leverage / Down Payments

[Jacob Eddy]

We recently not only discovered BiggerPockets, but real estate investing in general. For over a decade, we've had a mindset of paying cash for anything and everything we own, except the house we live in. While we still want to live by this principle, we feel that paying all cash for all of our rental units will simply take too long. Throughout the years, we've saved a significant amount of money, by being debt free other than our mortgage. Our home is currently on the market and once it sells, we aim to launch our real estate investing adventure. Cash vs. leverage is not so much the question, but let's say we hypothetically agree to a 50/50 split. 50% down on the home we live in and 50% down on our first investment property. My question is this, does it matter ROI-wise whether we do 50/50, 20/80, or 80/20, assuming no matter what, our debt to net ration is still 50/50? In other words, does it matter where the biggest chunk of our money lies, whether it be in the home we live in or the one we rent out?Thanks!