Rock in a hard place - Refi or HELOC on primary or secondary?

[Sarah McLaulin]

Hello! I am a new investor with a bit of an interesting challenge I hope the BP community can help! My grandmother pasted away and in March 2018 I purchased her home from a reverse mortgage. Since I work out of state from where she lived I had to purchase it as a second home. My husband is in construction and we remodeled her property and now rent it for short term vacation rentals.

I purchased my first primary home in July 2018. The home is in an up and coming area and my husband and I planned to fix it up to rent and then purchase another property to do the same. 

We planned to refi or get a HELOC on our second home in the next couple of months for the renovations, but our primary property tax sky rocketed and our primary mortgage is now more than 50% more of what it was originally! Timing was not on our side with the closing and we were unable to appeal the taxes last year and won't be until this May at the earliest.

At this point the mortgage is set to be higher than rent comps in the area and we are trying to figure out the best next step to work on financing our primary to make the renovations. With the recent purchases should we refi or HELOC? Should we consider these for the primary or the secondary? Any help is much appreciated!