So right now we really do not have enough money saved to do a down payment currently for the FHA or conventional loan.

I'm in the process of saving money to make a decent downpayment on a duplex or multi-family to house-hack.

The first time I went to the meetup I saved $20.000 , quite a story ! 

We have been saving up and are looking to invest some money into a property that we could either fix up and flip for a profit or to rent out to a family.

Also you can save a ton of time.

So we have been debating a couple options,1) Buy condo/townhouse (possibly without FHA) and then buy single family residence with FHA, move into the SFR and rent the condo2) Rent apartment, then search for a multi-family to buy and house hack3) Buy single family home and delay buying a rental due to save up for down paymentI would love to hear any advice or opinions on the options listed above (or any others) as well as, purchasing a property on a short time frame, and using a FHA loan on the second property instead of the first.

The amount you save plus the experience you gain is priceless.3. 

On a recent one, we needed $7k added back, I felt we had $9500 in clear "one time" stuff, the underwriter came up with $4200 and we had to fight/escalate to get a smidgen over $7k to make the deal work (this was a refi of some other property to save a few bucks a month, not a purchase mortgage, so I felt OK about taking this risk). 

I have been preapproved for a loan, and have some money saved for a down payment but I would be dipping into saving and rainy day funds that I would rather protect. 

But I quickly realized that saving up to buy more rentals all by myself was a much slower process than I would have liked.