What would you do with $200k?

Would love some advice from you learned people…here is the situation:

We have been very fortunate to inherit approx. $200k – I know, not a bad problem to have but we really want to utilise it in the best way to make a real difference to our life. We have just moved to the Newcastle area. I am working fulltime earning $120k. Prior to the move we had a coffee shop which my husband worked in full time but he is a chippy by trade. The idea with the move was to open another café but now with this unexpected cash we are weighing up our options. We have a passion for property and have a fair few successful renovations under our belts. We are trying for a bub so while we are easily able to live on my wage now we would like to think I will not be working within 12 months and so we will need an income stream for day to day living. Our ideal goal is for both of us not to have to have regular fulltime jobs – not to say we don’t want to work but we would like to have the flexibility of working for ourselves.

Some options as we see them:

Buy up run-down properties while I’m working and have borrowing power and hubby to renovate full time. But at some point we will run out of $$$ and/or borrowing power and can we really amass enough property that within 12 months it would earn an income stream of around $80k – I don’t think so. We could probably sell off and live on profits for a year or so but then it would be back to normal work and little or no property portfolio.

Hubby has been offered full-time work. If he took that for 12 months, double our borrowing power and buy up as much property as we can with potential but able to be rented out immediately. Then in a years’ time we spent a year or 2 just going through and renovating. Still seems limiting to me and I can still see us back in regular work.

Look at development projects/splitter blocks etc. Something that we don’t have experience in but we’re willing to learn. Still seems like we are going to have problems with borrowing power at some stage though.

Go back to the Café idea to focus on an income stream. Still buy as much property as we can in the next 12 months but will be far more limited with $$$ and time. But hopefully would give us a longer term potential for borrowing (obviously not as easily as full-time work but not the impossibility of no work) until we are in a position for property to be our main income stream.

Team up with others – we have quite a few parties keen to get in to property with us, (none of whom know about the money – purely because of my accounting degree and my hubby’s trade and previous projects we’ve done). Could it work to use someone else’s borrowing power, hubby’s labour and split on the $$$’s? But yes, many dangers involved in that.

Anyway sorry about the long, drawn out post but would love to hear any ideas on whether $200k, 12 months and borrowing power of roughly say $400k can give us the financial freedom we would love. We are very hard workers so not looking for any easy ways out, would just love the freedom to be able to structure work around our family when it happens.

Thanks!