When to go for a refi on a house

[Joe Ruder]

Hello;

Just wondering what some of you thought out best course of action would be.  Pretty simple setup:

1. We own a house (a second house, not our primary)

2. House is valued at about 120-140k

3. We own about 48k on it.

4. Just put about 18k into it getting it ready to rent (we don't want to sell as we may move back into it in 5 years or so).

5. We want to pull some equity out for reinvestment in other projects.

The question, should we wait until we get a renter in with a lease to show the bank that it is producing revenue or just go for a new regular mortgage? We already have a HELOC on our main house, so the money from the refi would probably just pay that one down as a mortgage rate would probably be lower than the rate on our HELOC (4.5%).

Thanks in advance for any feedback.

Joe