heloc for down payment on buy and hold?

[Elisha Mcginley]

hi everybody! so, i'm totally new to this game, but i've been reading, listening to podcasts, and researching in general, and i'm learning about helocs, and i think i would want to buy and hold property. someone at work told me i could take out a home equity line (i'm estimating $15-20k is what i have in my home's equity) to make a down payment on a secondary property, and i told him i didn't want to take that risk. he said that sometimes people take out home equity to buy a secondary property, then take equity out on the secondary property to pay back the first equity loan. does anyone know anything about this? i would assume that if i can get something low enough below market value, the equity will already be available, at least enough to cover the bulk of the original heloc. or, if i can get a small condo close to campus for a little more than double my equity, i may be able to get the loan payments low enough to recoup fairly quickly. a third option would be to spread the heloc out as down payments on more than one property. in any of these options, i think it would be a good idea to hold onto about 5k liquid for anything that might pop up. i have to start somewhere, but is this too risky?