House-Hacking the First Deal - Generate $ for the Second Deal?

[Nina Ricci]

Hey, everyone!

My investment partner and I are just starting out. We're going to see our first potential property tonight, actually. It's a multi-family, two-unit HomePath property. If this one doesn't work out, this is the kind of deal we're looking to snag in order to both begin our investment journey and also move out of our parents' homes. We'd only be living there a year, as required, and then we'd be looking to rent out both units.

We're really starting from scratch here and are looking for low-to-no money down options for our first mortgage (we've mainly only looked into FHA loans at this point).

Do you have any opinions or advice about house-hacking to start out? What types of numbers do you recommend paying the most attention to/what should we aim for? Do you have any other types of loans you'd recommend also with low-to-no money down? Do you recommend something like flipping instead? Going through with house-hacking and saving from the cash flow on the rental unit(s)?