HELOC/FiCO (SLC area)

[Peter Dang]

Hello everyone, New member and this will be my first post (sorry for it being long)

I live and invest out of the Greater Salt lake area. The property i currently own is a duplex through a FHA loan. Purchased last year and now tenant occupied. Since i bought it last year, the market has gone up about 13% which put my property below 80% LTV. i just pulled a HELOC out of it in hopes of using it to pay off my debt to increase my FICO. I used part of it to pay off both my vehicles and was thinking of using the rest as a down payment for my next property.

The only debt i have left over is my student loans, which i am an seriously thinking of using to pay it off to maximize my leverage to increase my FICO. But this will put in in a Maxed out HELOC with no Hard money in reserves to put down in the next property.

I have two scenarios:

Pay off all my debt with the HELOC and wait for my FICO to jump to position myself better for the next property Purchase

or

Keep the HELOC and have only one debt (student loan) and possibly use the rest of it for hard money as a down payment on next purchase.

I plan on house hacking my next property by REFI my Duplex into a Conv. loan possibly Investment or Owner Occupied. Then Freeing up an FHA loan to purchase my next house hack. In the situation state above, what is the best solution? If i use the HELOC to pay off all my debt and increase my FICO, UW will Condition for the HELOC be paid through the equity of the property anyways?

Thank you for all your input and i forward to chatting with you.

if you are from SLC, PLEASE! add me so we can start our own community here.