HELOC on a second home (not a vacay prop)

[Danielle Z.]

I'm pretty new here. I'm looking to take out a Heloc on a rental property I have. I find many lenders will not do a HELOC on a property that is not the primary residence or a vacation home so I'm struggling to figure out a strategy to get a down payment for an investment. I have more equity in this rental than my primary home (500K equity with appraised value of 700K) vs my primary residence that has about 200k in equity and a value of about 750K. I want to use the Heloc to buy an investment property (or properties). I think to start we'll need 100K down on a property but I thought if we could get more maybe we could use it for another investment a year or two down the road. Not sure which is the smartest way to go about this. Also my husband is a finance guy and is very concerned about the variable rates going up with no cap. I think he won't let us do this if we can't limit our risk on the variable rate to some degree. Have people ever been able to either get a fixed rate option or that there is a cap on the interest rate? We ideally wouldn't want to refinance our current properties as my interest rates are 3.75 and 4.1%. What have other used as strategies. Thanks in advance.