What would you do with $30k?

Question

After a brief hiatus while my wife and I had our son, we are getting back on track for our investing goals. I have been listening to all of the podcasts I can and reading more books (I promise I'm not in education paralysis) and think we came up with a couple of good options for our situation.

At first, my thought was, "how do I start when we have no money, two car payments and student debt? OPM of course!" And while yes, it is doable, we felt we needed to get some of our financial stuff together first. So, we paid off both cars and refinanced my student debt to save half of the monthly payment. Now we are looking at three options around July-September timeline.

Option 1: We sell our primary residence in the HOPE of finding something to move to in our extremely hot market. Take our $30k profit and invest that out of state in a rental. (Moving our primary residence out of state is not an option at this point)

Option 2: We hold on to our primary residence due to the inability to find another one and by then have $20-30k saved up and find a rental property out of state to buy.

Option 3: Go with either of those options but with the addition of finding a partner to buy a bigger (maybe quad?) property with.

Bottom line, for those experienced small MF investors: What would you do with $20-30k cash and just starting out?

Any and all advice is greatly appreciated!

Ryan Jones · Answer

@Bryan Danger thanks for the reply. I guess I meant not conducive to the investing strategy that I am looking for myself. I still think the market is over priced and don't really have a desire to invest in Oregon unless it was a destination STR on the coast or mountain later on.

I like your idea of the ADU except our property really doesn't have property. It's a 1500 sf house in a very packed subdivision. So no opportunity there... but thanks for the ideas!

Bryan Danger · Answer

What do you mean by "not conducive"?Portland laws just changed to allow greater density (up to 4 homes on any residential lot)... I feel like you might be doing all the homework and researching opportunities elsewhere; but possibly missing the one you're already sitting on.

Obviously don't know which part of town your current home is in... but have you considered adding an ADU (or 2) to maximize your current property rather than selling it? You also might wan to consider downsizing initially to help set yourself up for future growth.If you run the potential numbers with your small family living in the ADU and renting the large house instead... the metrics can shift quite rapidly!

Ryan Jones · Answer

@Michael Plante my home market is not conducive to the strategy of small MF properties and the landlord tenant laws are not in our favor. Plus the pricing is outrageous. I'd rather search out of state and be able to buy more property with less that actually has laws in support of landlords.

Michael Plante · Answer

Why the focus on pit of state?