Hitting financial lending challenges with over 5 properties - options?

[Phil Zofrea]

I have 3 single family rental investment properties, a primary home and a 2nd home (all financed).

I am looking to get the equity out of my 3 investment properties to use to purchase more investment properties. It appears that options are limited with no HELOC and Fannie refi-cash-out when you have 5 or more properties. Investment properties currently have two 15 yr fixed 3.9% and one 30 yr fixed 5.5% now conservative potential to get about $150K pulling out equity from all three).

I have a couple of options that I have been presented with:

1) pay off one house in short term and then refi cash out the other two

2) portfolio loan for all 3 properties (this is 7% ARM which is reevaluated annually so if interest rates remained the same would probably go down to 5% in one year)

3) commercial lender with balloon payment in 5 years

My goal is to acquire another property every year or every other year.

With the limited information I can provide in this post, would you recommend any of these options or any other I do not have listed?

Thanks - appreciate it everyone!

Phil