Buying a home before investing in NOVA?

[Alex Nguyen]

Would you suggest owning your home before investing in Northern Virginia? (Or perhaps own your home first regardless of where you live?)

When I first became convinced that real estate investing plays a very large part in building wealth, I wanted to find cash flow opportunities. I planned on renting a cheap place for myself but buy investments to get passive income. However, I realize that cash flow is very difficult in the NoVA market due to very high home values and comparatively low rental rents (you may find properties that meet the 1% rule in Fredericksburg or Stafford, but I think that's it). 

This is an area where real estate appreciates pretty reliably I think and so it seems that going for an appreciation strategy is probably the best way to go. If that's the case, I'd might as well buy my first home as my first real estate investment. I can at least rent out rooms to pay for the expenses as I save for the next one.