Advice wanted for couple new to real estate investing

[Kody Wright]

Hey Guys,

As mentioned in the description, my fiancé and I are currently living in a condo with about $131,000 worth of equity in it and want to move due to a noisy upstairs neighbor. We've been wanting to get started in real estate investing for a while now and think this is a good jumping off point to start.

What we've been trying to figure out is this: should we rent the condo out and buy a new place to live in as our home (thus starting over on a new mortgage)? Or sell the condo and transfer that equity to our new home then buy a rental property separately?

It's worth noting a few things here that are unique to our situation.

1) We're not married yet, the condo is hers and I've been "renting" from her while we've been living here. The condo is currently valued at around 345k.

2) Before we had met I was saving for a downpayment on my own home, I continued this throughout our relationship and have now amassed around 55k. This is what would be used to either buy the new home or rental property.

3) Since I've never owned a home in my name I qualify for some of the first-time homebuyer perks. So for the first property we would possibly have to put down very little to buy it.

4) We're both in our early thirties. Not sure if that matters...

Thanks in advanced for any advice! We're wanting to do this "right" and were hoping to be able to learn from the massive amount of experience in this forum.