Just sold house, but thinking about buying rental instead of home

[Latham Gaines]

My wife and I just sold our house, and have $150,000 to put down on a new one in Nashville, but we've been thinking about buying a rental instead, and then renting a place for ourselves there... both for the tax breaks, and also to get on the investment ladder.  We figure Nashville real estate will probably continue to go up, and have also been thinking about a 2 year "live and flip", but we're not sure what to do... any advice/thoughts/ideas from you lovely people would be hugely appreciated!

[Will Fraser]

HI @Latham Gaines! I think this is a brilliant idea! I'll share what my wife and I did recently as a banner that I'd recommend to anyone! We sold our home in OKC and used the money to buy a 4-plex (which allows us to live for $Free.99) and a BRRRR deal. Now we've gotten most of the money out of the BRRRR deal and are sitting on a total of 6 units from the proceeds of our 1 home. So in a year 1 home became 6 units AND us living for free, allowing us to walk the Lifeonaire life a bit sooner than we had imagined!

The live-in-flip could be a good move in a market like Nashville, but if you can find a 4plex that you could make work for the next year and can let you live for $0 out of pocket or a really-reduced-rate each month, I'd go for that.  You could likely even do both at the same time by house-hacking a 4-plex while buying a fixer-upper on a construction loan, then refinancing it a year down the line with a low downpayment owner occupant loan.