HELOC a no go after refi

[Pamela S.]

This is my first post but I've been devouring information on this website for the last 4-5 months. Pardon me if I don't have all of the jargon down as I'm still learning. My husband and I decided we are interested in purchasing a SFH as a rental eventually and we have half of a 40k down payment so far. It's a bit slow going but steadily increasing the savings. Then, I discovered that a HELOC might be a good way to help and since our home has over 100k in equity currently we thought this would be a good strategy to help with down payment. We got in touch with our local credit union and started the process but quickly found that in Texas you cannot take a HELOC if you've already refinanced once, which we did 3 years ago before I discovered this investing strategy. I had gotten my hopes up about getting to the starting line quicker but it seems we are back to just saving up money again. Is there anything i'm missing when it comes to HELOC? I've also always worked hard to maintain our finances so that our credit score is 800+. It seems like there should be some way of using this to our benefit but I'm not sure what. Am I just too impatient or is there something I'm missing.