Feeling a little stuck

[Justin Knighten]

I'm not 100% sure this is the best area to post this, if it should be moved let me know.  I'll lay out the situation and if you need any more info, I'll try to provide it. 

I've (and my wife, who doesn't have much to do with it but is supportive of it) have been investing in real estate for about 3.5 years. We started with a townhouse, then added another 8 months later. Those are rented out long-term and are doing well. In late 2020 we bought a small cabin in the next county over by a river and started renting it out on Airbnb and it's doing incredible. Then in March, we purchased a single family home that is located directly in front of our primary home and started renting it out on Airbnb. The hope with that one was to both control the neighborhood and to make a little money, it's doing very well also. The down payment for all of these has came from a HELOC on our primary, all the money that is generated from any of the rentals goes back into paying that down. We have NO other debt outside of real estate and the HELOC. I work a W2 job as a fireman. I'm not dying to get out of that, but in 5 years, I will have locked in significant retirement benefits and my goal is to have the option of living off of real estate income at that point should I decide to. I'll be 41 and would need to completely cover my expenses, my pension will not start paying out until I'm 50.

I met with the loan officer at our local bank that we've worked with (they have the HELOC and are holding the mortgage on the last purchase) and talked about another purchase. He said that my debt to income is very close to being too high for another loan. He also said that the Airbnb's are somewhat difficult to count as income before we've gotten a tax return done that shows the profit off of them as well, that issue should be resolved by March of next year I suppose and I understand where he's coming from with that. None of the previous deals were BRRR's, we've paid close to market for them, with the exception of the one if front of us, we didn't do much work, but we knew the seller and I'm confident that we got it for $10,000 under market. I like the BRRR strategy, and I'm starting to see a few deals come up that would lend themselves to that. However, I feel like the perfect deal could drop in my lap and I wouldn't be able to take it down due to a lack of financing capability. I've thought about hard money, but I haven't looked into it. The thing that makes me nervous about that would be getting everything done and then finding out that I couldn't do the refinance and then being left in a bind at that point.

I"m not in a place where not buying something for the next year is going to put me behind in life, but with interest rates low, inflation coming, and the shortage of houses for the near future, I feel like I'm going to miss out on stuff.  We just had a tri-plex come up for sale (rare for this area), that needed updates that are in my wheelhouse that was priced fairly, and I'm not able to do anything...I don't like that and I'd like to set myself up to not be in that spot again.  I also don't want to overextend myself and have everything come crashing down on me.  I'd love to hear some thoughts, opinions, and any advice folks have.