SFH worth 240K (+/-), HELOC = First Deal Financed?

[Joshua Dees]

Hi, 27 years old, Dallas, TX. My wife and I want to get into REI, I would like to achieve the same 2,000/ month I make now, to start out with, just to make it FROM HOME, so I can help my wife with homeschooling 3 kids. Starting out, I heard from someone else on another forum talking about "taking the equity out of your home, it will be based on what your house is worth, minus what you owe in your mortgage) So here's the deal. My wife and I got married, and together we have 3 children. Shortly after we got married, we got the most amazing gift. A house. Paid for, in cash 100%. All we have to do is pay HOA Dues, which has a yearly option, and pay the taxes. We just completed our VERY FIRST Property Tax Protestant Hearing with the Collins County Appraisal Review Board. Apparently, the fact that the house was bought for 234K, makes no difference whatsoever, and the house is now worth $247,000. Fine. I tried, and hey! At least I got them to come down from $264,000, (Thank you Hail Storm of 2016) I digress, Does the fact that I OWN my home, and it's paid for, put me in ANY KIND of Power-Position (in the sense of Me vs. Life)? If my goal is to own a few Multi-family Properties and receive the Passive Income from those properties as our $$ that we live on, basically substituting the money I make at my Hourly Job now, with passive income from rental properties, can I take out a HELOC and use it to buy a multi family property? And how much will it be? Since I don't have a mortgage, I don't owe anything, so if the house was bought for 234k, can I get like 200K, here's another, Since the house was APPRAISED at 247K, can I get close to THAT NUMBER? How does the bank/lender base the value on the properties for the line of credit? To recap: -Can I get a HELOC to fund my first deal? -Should I ? (making 2k/month now with 20k saved up in bank) -How do they determine the value of the house?