Living in an apartment while investing? Good or bad?

[Travis Stafford]

Bring me your brutal criticism! It is always so darn helpful! Haha My fiancé and I just completed our first live in flip. Bought our home for $150k. Lived there during her 3 year masters degree. Renovated it and sold it this year for $243k. Sold for $243k -$14k closing cost -$30k Reno -$109k remaining mortgage We now have roughly $90k on hand. We have decided to flip another condo and purchase a rental simultaneously. We haven’t signed on any properties yet, but are actively looking. Rather than use our cash to buy a home for ourselves, we decided to move into an apartment and use all of the cash for investment properties. We like the idea of having cash reserves, apartment amenities, and zero maintenance. It makes sense to us to do this, but I’d love to here what people think of this strategy. Do you think renting an apartment to free up the cash is a good idea, or would you have purchased another live in flip? Or something completely different? I love brutal honesty, so don’t hold back!

[Max Taylor]

@Travis Stafford everyone's different, but I agree with your strategy and wish I had done it myself. I "flipped" the condo my fiancé and I we're living in and we cleared about 70K on it doing less that $2500 worth to work over the 15 months we lived there, (just painting and crazy appreciation in Somerville, MA). Instead of buying that condo or the single family I now live in, I could of bought 2-3 investment properties that paid my rent plus put a couple of grand/ month in our pockets. 

Had I known what I know now, back then I would have done what you're doing now. If REI investing is going to be a major source of income for you long term, in my opinion, there's not a whole lot of value in owning the place you live, until you're buying for school systems and children. That money can work a lot harder for you then paying down equity on the place you live.