HELOC strategy advice?

[Wei Li]

Hi all, I am new to the BP community and want to leverage your opinions on investing for passive income using a HELOC strategy. Currently, I have an investment property that is paid off and can potentially take out ~80k of HELOC on the property. I've read a lot of posts on people utilizing their HELOC to buy new properties and it seems like a great idea, although I'm entirely new to this approach.

The problem I seem to have is that I also owe 360K in mortgage on my current property and have monthly mortgage pymt of 3K/mo. which doesn't leave me much room for any additional savings. In my situation, how do I use the 80K in equity effectively if only the rental income would be used to pay down the heloc? 

I'm currently interested in some properties in TX that goes for around 250K and yields ~1.5k in rental income, but that would require me to take out also take out a conventional mortgage on top of the HELOC and the math might not work out. Is it possible for me to get in the game with my situation?

Hope to get some insights from anyone who might have had similar experiences or are willing to share their expertise!

- Wei