Cash Out Refi or Save Down Payment

[Kyle Hunter]

Hey Everyone,

I'm new to real estate investing and have kind of stumbled into this by accident. I purchased a townhome in 2015 for $140k. Lived there for two years and then moved into another home, while keeping the townhome as a rental because I figured I could pay it off quickly and just use the rent to supplement my income. Based on similar houses sold in the area recently, it is probably worth about $260k with 80k remaining on the mortgage. Seeing how the house has appreciated so much without me doing a ton of work, I've been thinking to repeat this process, but my question is how to do so? In my limited research it seems that I should do a cash out refi and take the $180k in equity to put toward another investment property. I have several questions about how this might work:

1. First, in general, do I get all of the equity in a cash out refi, or can I specify a smaller amount for a down payment?

2. Should I just forget the cash out refi and save for a down payment? My worry here is that I want to put the townhome and new investment property into an LLC. I heard getting a loan with an LLC can be difficult.

3. Could I just use the entire amount from the cash out refi to entirely fund a new property that is 180k or less to get around potential loan and LLC issues?

Just thinking out strategies here. Thanks for any advice as I am new to this.

Kyle