Just starting out. Should we take a home equity loan out ?

[Lauren Philipp]

Hello everyone!! This is my first post, my husband and I have just started to set up our business plan for investing in multi-family homes (duplexes) in our area. My question is should we take a home equity loan out on our house? We have a good amount of equity in it or should we use our cash for the down payment? If we took out a home equity loan we could use our cash for repairs if needed, have some cash for any expenses, and still have money in savings for our family. My husband doesn’t really like the idea of taking the home equity loan out because we do have the ability to save a very good amount of money a month from his job if we decided to use our cash . We are looking for properties now and know that we have to be very smart in our choice and we do have a plan to follow and have educated ourselves immensely before we made this decision. My fear is that if we use our money then if something happens we would not have cash if needed. We could use credit cards but we have no debt but our home and don’t use credit cards and if we need to we pay them right off. We also in the last year since buying our home have been doubling the mortgage payments.  My husband is the only one with a paycheck. I just finished real estate school to help us in this journey. Has anyone been in this situation and have any advice? It will be greatly appreciated!!