[quote=Werewolf]
Also how does getting an investment property 1st affect my mortgage candidacy later (like a 1/2 yrs from now) for a home that I would actually like to live in?
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Ideally it won’t affect you much, and could even help you, if you had REALLY good positive cash flow. The lender will count a portion of the rent as income (maybe 75%). You want as much of the first property’s payment covered by that as possible, because anything else is just added to your list of liabilities and hurts you when qualifying for the second property.

That assumes you’re going to rent out the first property from the start. If you’re going to live in it, that’s way more difficult to pull off. You’d have to qualify for both payments in order to get the second property – potential rental income doesn’t count.