My situation and my next steps

[Travis Dutro]

hello everyone, 

Here is my situation. I bought a home 3 years ago and have been updating it little by little ever since. By March of 2019 I'd like to get it appraised and hope to have 30-40k equity in it. At that point I'll be able to get a HELOC or HEL. At that point I could buy my first rental property;)

The one question I have there is could I use that equity to leverage and use as a 20% down on a 60k mortgage? Or would it even be wise to do that? 

If not then I’d hope to find a home for under 40k with potential to be worth 60k. The market seems to be around 40-70k in nice neighborhoods (c and b) with nice homes that don’t need much of anything. 

There’s quite a few 20k homes here not in the best neighborhood that need probably 10k of work and still wouldn’t rent over 500 a month. At 500 a month there’s no room for cash flow after insurance, taxes, and maintenance. So I’m leaning away from the cheaper homes. Nice 3 bed 1 bath go for 600-800 here.

My only other option if I wanted to start now is to find a seller financed home and borrow around 8k personal loan from bank with 10-12% interest and use 3-5k for down payment. The problem I’m having with that is finding a seller willing enough! 

Any ideas, brainstorming or constructive criticism is appreciated. I’m just a fellow bp member looking to get started with what I have (or don’t have)

Thanks!!