Purchasing a townhome without intent to rent it out

[Jennifer Knox]

Long story short, we operate a couple of different businesses from home and our space in our home is rather tight to live and work efficiently. We considered renting an office space or even purchasing a commercial office but the market seems rather soft where we live and we thought purchasing a townhome would give us the flexibility of space for out of town guests, some storage (we currently rent a storage unit) and give us space to spread out in terms of workspace. 

We have only ever considered investing in real estate in two basic ways: flipping a place or renting one out. We've never considered purchasing a second property and not having it be an income-producing property while we own it. We currently don't take the home office deduction because our space at home doesn't meet the requirements, we are spending money OOP on storage, and we just would like to have something that we think we can sell easily in the future without too many issues. 

Financing: We have less than six figures in equity in our primary property and we have retirement $ tied up in a 401K. Our goal has been to actually keep this primary property and rent it out and purchase a larger home but we wonder if we had two properties appreciating at the same time with one giving us some serious tax advantages if that would be a better strategy? 

I'm making a checklist of advantages but I'd love it if people could point out not just the benefits of this idea but also it's flaws we may not be seeing readily. Thanks for any advice!