Cash out refi on primary residence

[Timothy McLean]

For the past six months my wife and I have been saving and planning a rental property purchase. We are pay yourself first beleivers so we tend to put more towards 401ks and Iras for retirement. We have 2 mortgages, 47k at 3.125% and 30k at 1%. My credit is excellent minus a foreclosure that finalized 5 years ago. Still it is a burden. My wife is the only one on the note currently and due to my past foreclosure we are going with her income alone. I make considerably more than she does but my income cannot considered. The HELOC path did not seem to pan out. Restrictions are tighter and they did not offer much after the application due to her income. We are in the process of applying for a cash out refi which would give us approximately 130k to work with. Attempting this with our current lender/servicer. We have about 30k in cash aside from reserves, and are hoping to go with a 15 year refi as to not completely reset the clock on our primary. This will depend on our DTI considering just my wife's income. The question becomes (besides anyone's thoughts on refinancing) is should we do a cash purchase on one property or finance more than one? The area we wish to invest is tight. Cash offers will rule and properties go very fast. We are assuming a seasoning period of 6 months in order to refinance to pull cash out. The goal clearly would be to repeat the process twice a year if possible. The bright side is that we are credit card debt free and one would assume we are worthy borrowers. In two years my income comes into play and we should be off to the races.

There are some fears here to overcome as well so talk me into it.

Any advice or thoughts would be very appreciated.