Experts on Equity.. What would you do?

[Christopher Giannino]

So I'm less than a week away from closing on my first deal. I had found a FSBO property on Zillow.com and I could tell the owner was very motivated to sell. In less than 20 days on the market the owner dropped the price, which was already slightly below market value, by $10k. After the owner did the second $5,000 price drop I decided I had to go see this property. About two days after viewing the property, I put in an offer even lower than the already low list price and my offer was automatically accepted. I'm very familiar with my market and from the beginning I knew that the property was going to appraise for higher than what I was paying for it.

Fast forward to a month an a half later, I just received my appraisal and it ended up appraising for $30,000 more. I'm very fortunate that from day one I will have instant equity and never had to swing a hammer. My intentions for this property was to live in it for about a year (maybe two years max) and then keep it as a rental. Since I knew this was going to be my strategy upfront, I made sure I did all my calculations based on the fact it was going to be a rental. When I eventually move out, I will be cash flow positive $275 which turns out to be a CoC return of about 8.6%.

With everything being said, I want to pick the brains of all the equity experts out there. I intend to live in this property for at least a year. I intend to buy future investment properties. I have about $25,000 in debt (student loans at 6.7% APR and a car loan at 2.99% APR.) I have about $30,000 in cash available for future purchases. How could I leverage this equity and put it to best use?