Get our feet wet by buying Mother-In-Law's home?
My husband and I are aspiring to break into real estate investing, have studied BP for over a year, but have been around and around, back and forth about the best strategy for our first deal. We are trying to overcome analysis paralysis and finally take action. While we do have cash saved up, we'd prefer to work on our credit for another year before looking at getting a mortgage or commercial loan to possibly do a fix and flip.
If you were us, would you a) use our cash to purchase, fix and flip something older and cheaper outright which seems like a huge undertaking for our first deal, b) use our cash as the downpayment/skin-in for a hard money loan (balloon) while we work on conventional qualifications to refi at a lower rate in 12 months, c) My in-laws are in the process of purchasing a seller-financed home and are interested in "renting-to-own" their place to us. I know there is equity in the place, I would just need exact numbers from them before we would even consider it. Even so, my husband is most interested because my in-laws only want to get what is owed on it, and it appears that using our cash for some minor improvements on it (or she has offered to get a HELOC for improvements) could add value. My husband likes the idea that we could move from our current apartment into a possible live-in flip to get our feet wet with little to no use of our cash. Again, I would run exact numbers before committing.
Or d) would you utilize some other strategy that you're willing to elaborate on. A house hack or living together here isn't an option because the current house is relatively small and my mother-in-law is basically at the point of closing with the new house she's found and fallen in love with. Thanks for any advice!