Kansas City Multifamily Financing

[Carrie Hallensleben]

Currently my husband and I own three rental properties along with our primary residence. We are interested in moving toward small multifamily i.e. 4 to 6-plex to start. My question involves financing. We have a home that has 10 years left on the loan and we owe about 90K. We have a HELOC we can use for 80K. However, if we are to access that HELOC, the lenders have told us that is using financed money for the down payment. Would it be smarter to refinance the home and pull about 100K in equity to use for investing? Another question...if we refinance but it isn't our primary residence anymore, will the terms be worse than refinancing an owner occupied property. Any feedback about the pros and cons of this would be very helpful as we try to move forward in obtaining a multifamily investment.