First Home purchase Owner Occupied

[Nelco Ville]

I’m a 32-year-old first-time homebuyer in Nashville. I earn about $78k/year in IT, have a 760+ credit score, about $15k in savings, and a vehicle loan with a $570/month payment and roughly $27k remaining on the balance.

I’m trying to decide what my next move should be from a wealth-building perspective.

Options I’m considering:

• Continue renting a room cheaply and save aggressively.
• Buy a primary residence and house hack.
• Wait until I have more cash reserves.
• Focus on paying down debt first.

My goal is long-term financial freedom through real estate while keeping risk manageable.

If you were in my shoes today, what would you do over the next 1–3 years and why?

I’m less interested in being told what I want to hear and more interested in what experienced investors would honestly do if they were starting from my exact position.

[Drew Sygit]

Quote from @Nelco Ville:

I’m a 32-year-old first-time homebuyer in Nashville. I earn about $78k/year in IT, have a 760+ credit score, about $15k in savings, and a vehicle loan with a $570/month payment and roughly $27k remaining on the balance.

I’m trying to decide what my next move should be from a wealth-building perspective.

Options I’m considering:

• Continue renting a room cheaply and save aggressively.
• Buy a primary residence and house hack.
• Wait until I have more cash reserves.
• Focus on paying down debt first.

My goal is long-term financial freedom through real estate while keeping risk manageable.

If you were in my shoes today, what would you do over the next 1–3 years and why?

I’m less interested in being told what I want to hear and more interested in what experienced investors would honestly do if they were starting from my exact position.

Why keep throwing away your rent payments?

Why not instead pay your rent towards a mortgage payment that builds equity in a house?

If I was starting out, I'd look to acquire a 2-4 unit property with an FHA 3.5% low-down payment mortgage.

I'd also look into using an FHA 203k renovation loan, allowing me to buy something ugly, thus unqualified for a standard mortgage, which would weed out a lot of competition and push the price lower.

To maximize my cashflow and gain landlording experience, I'd do STR and MTR in the other units, as well as the other bedrooms in my unit.

Since most cities won’t allow basement rental units, I’d consider finishing the basement, just well enough for me to live down there (cities don’t care if owner chooses to live in basement), so I could rent out ALL the units/rooms.

I'd save all my cash and look to refi the property in 1-2 years out of the FHA mortgage, so I could use it again if necessary. Depending on how close I was to having 20% equity in the property and being able to avoid PMI, I'd consider using some of my cash to pay down the mortgage when I refinanced. Otherwise, I'd save my cash for the next acquisition.

I’d also be posting on every social media platform and telling everyone I knew that I was looking for more real estate deals. I’d aim for low downpayment land contracts and lease options.

After refinancing out of the FHA mortgage, I'd evaluate if I wanted to repeat the 2-4 unit FHA 203(k) process again or if I had the 20% down to target 5+ units.

While still living in the property, AFTER the refi out of the FHA mortgage, I'd also explore securing a HELOC to tap my equity for emergencies.

Good luck with whatever you decide to do!