Pay Off House or Invest in New MultiFamily Property

[Sam Harper]

Greetings BP,

Glad to have been introduced to this community over the last month. I am coming from a classic Dave Ramsey mentality of paying off your house in full before moving on to other real estate investments. 

I am about three years away from paying off my primary residence through a savings plan of money I'm making from my job/side hustles.  Understanding that it can depend on the deal that may be available I wanted to see if anyone else had any thoughts on paying off their primary residence (which in my case would free up about $650/mo in cashflow) or investing in a rental property that would begin growing equity and have a little bit of cash flow.

Any feedback would be appreciated as this is my first go.

Thanks!

[Jacob K.]

Hi @Sam Harper, and welcome to BP!

I think it all comes down to your comfort level on what you'd like to do. It also depends on whether or not you are comfortable moving somewhere else if it were advantageous for your investing career to potentially reduce your personal cost of housing.

If you're comfortable with leverage, then you should consider looking into a rental property. You should learn about the different advantages for real estate investing (loan paydown, appreciation, tax benefits, cash flow). As for where to start, I would start by reading the BP forums, listen to BP podcast episodes and check out the beginner's guide here: https://www.biggerpockets.com/real-estate-investin...

In my opinion, his methodology is helpful to people who have a lot of consumer debt (credit cards, personal loans, etc), but not all that applicable to real estate investors.