0 Down, No PMI NACA Loan - Single Family or Multi Family?

[Eileen L.]

NACA has somewhat of a bad reputation online- but I'm almost done being qualified and it has been great for me so far.

That being said, for those of you unfamiliar, NACA gives you loans with no PMI, 0 down payment, below market interest rates, and you can buy down the interest rate .25% for every 1% of the purchase price. It's pretty unbelievable. There are conditions that 1) you cannot currently own other property and 2) the property must be owner-occupied for the life of the loan.

I thought at first this would be a great opportunity to buy my "forever" home since I would never find a better long-term mortgage. Then, I started to consider using it to buy a duplex in order to start my investment portfolio through house hacking. 

My plan was to buy and live in the duplex, buy a second multi family in 1 year, and then hopefully buy and move into my "dream" SFR in about 2 years.

However, if I wanted to move out of the NACA-financed duplex, I would need to either refinance or sell. Then, I realized since I put 0 down, I would barely build any equity in 2 years so I probably wouldn't be able to refinance easily.

I had wanted to buy the multifamilies before buying the SFR because I wanted to be able to save more money faster and use the rental income to lower my DTI. I was afraid buying a single family house would stretch my DTI and make it difficult to purchase additional multifamilies.

Please, any advice! Should I purchase the single family home first or house hack first? Or do you have other advice?