First time investors - please critique our strategy!

[Jared Mathis]

Hello! This is our first post to BiggerPockets and we're going to just jump right in. My husband Jared and I are first time real estate investors in our mid-30's from Washington state and we're currently evaluating several markets to invest for buy and hold properties (either SFH or MFH).

Our story:

Unbeknownst to us at the time, we ended up doing a live-in flip on our first home of 10 years, having bought in 2009 and sold near top of a very hot market here in WA in 2018. Long story short, by next spring, we’ll have 425k in liquid cash saved up through a combination of the sale of our home and saving money while living the last year with my parents. By that time, we want to be ready to purchase our first investment property.

Our goals:

1. Replace my income as quickly as possible (i.e. cash flow element is our priority for now :) ). I would like to eventually be able to be home with my son who is turning 1 next month.
2. Continue to build our investing business through the cash flow of our properties as we acquire them, and through money made through our day-to-day jobs.  We both plan to keep working for the next 5 years or so.

Our high level strategy:

Spring/Summer 2020: We plan to buy our first property in cash for the extra negotiating edge this gives us. We want to purchase something in need of rehab that we can build up ARV into, and get it rented out via a local property management company. We hope to learn a lot from this experience & want to focus on building a great team of people to help us get this done.

Spring/Summer 2021: We plan to buy a second property in cash. We then plan to get a cash out refi on our 2020 house to purchase a third as well. This way, we'll hopefully have established quite a few months of rental history / seasoning from house 1 to be able to achieve a good LTV on the refi. This leaves us with 2 houses paid for in cash and one which has been mortgaged.

2022 onwards: We hope to be able to more or less follow this sort of hybrid BRRRR model where we refi one of our properties from the prior year, and also come in and buy a property from our savings any year that is possible. We like the idea of maintaining a lower overall "debt to income ratio" against all our assets.

Your thoughts?

1. We’re wondering what all folks on here would be doing if you had this money to invest starting out?
2. Does anyone on here have thoughts, suggestions, critiques, or recommendations regarding our strategy they’d be willing to share?

Any and all thoughts would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks!

Jared & Jessica