To sell or not to sell

[Hillary Buckingham]

Hello! My husband and I are hungry to start investing in real estate. We have the capital for a downpayment and closing costs to go ahead invest in one, but we're wanting to invest in more than one property this year. 

To do so, we're going to need more capital (and of course the thumbs up from the bank to get a loan). We've come up with two possibilities on how to get this capital, but don't know what one makes the most sense or if there's something we're missing.

Option 1: Cash out refinance - get capital out of our home, hopefully lower our interest rate in the process, keep our home to use as a possible rental property in the future, and maybe the house gets seen as an asset with the bank so it's easier to get an additional loan (?). We would get about $18k with a cash out refi. 

Option 2: Sell our house and rent for the time being - acquires capital through the sale of the home and lowers our debt to income ratio, but rent will likely be $800 or more each month than what we're currently paying on our mortgage. We would get about $56k with the sale. 

We've talked with multiple banks in the area and they haven't been helpful. Any insight or tips would be greatly appreciated. We're located in Duluth, MN.