Buying versus renting over short term w/ goal of multiple rentals

[Jon Creech]

Thanks in advance. I am a medical professional with a high earning potential just finishing training. I have a family member that is renovating a house for my wife and I that we can either rent for a very low amount (like 500$) or buy. The house was bought for 160k about a year ago and after renovations and appreciation it will be worth about 250k or more. I was curious if the community would recommend buying this property and doing a BRRR in about 3-4 years with the equity. We are planning on building our "forever" home at that time. Or if we should rent the house from our family and just get a better property that will cash flow now. I know we could potentially do both. But is it a bad idea to get a house that likely will not cash flow to do the initial BRRR? In the rental environment that we will live I doubt we could get much more than 1200$ a month. I could probably get multiple properties from this house out of the equity from the HELOC if we did bought it. I should be able to afford the difference in the mortgage and whatever rent we would get after the BRRR/HELOC to future tenants.

Thanks!