Best way to leverage 200k in investment dollars

[Lee Carter]

All,

I have been trying to educating myself over the last 6 months or so on ways to maximize some investment funds I have. They started as company stock options when I was hired and have now converted and full vested stocks. I now have access to 200k all currently resting in a single stock and i'd like to cash out and invest into real estate. 

I've already cashed out 75k and used about 50k of it to purchase my first rental property. I found an individual just before Christmas that had to sell in a hurry. I was able to leverage that to purchase a 70k house that needs cosmetic work for 47,500 cash. I now own that property and just got the tenet to sign a lease till 6/30/2020 @ 815/mo so it's cash flowing immediately. the tenet has been in place the last 5 years. 

i'm now looking for best ways or new ideas to continue this investment process... 

a new option just brought to my attention from a local bank commercial loan offers has got me thinking...

1) Use my cash to purchase two more properties (I think i want to keep about 25-50k cash reserves for any unknowns on my current rentals) so lets just say I spend 150 of it and get 3 houses if I can get this lucky... all three houses would then be technically valued @ about 210k if I was able to find similar deals two more times like I just did... 

2) take out a line of credit on the houses for a total of 178,500 (85% o 210) for possible cash...

 - now I turn my focus to slightly higher end houses and traditional financing (cash-out refi I should really say)

3) have access to 175k  to start making cash offers on larger homes looking for motivated sellers that want to move quick so I can get them under market value (shooting for 85% or 75% of market value if possible but may be hard... not sure) 

 - once a purchase is made I have two options (dictated by how good of a discount I got)

1) If I find a house for 75% of market value then:

   - use my line of credit to get the cash to purchase and then make interest only payments for 6 months waiting for the new home to "season". once it's seasoned, cash-out refi at 75% of market value pulling my initial vestment back out and paying off the line of credit.

2) if I find a house for 85% of market value then:

 - commercial loan (5 year fixed rate, 20 year adjustable and slightly higher interest rates) on this new house as they will give me 85% market value with no seasoning, pay off my line of credit immediately then start making aggressive payments for the next 3 years on this new home with positive cash flow from all my other 3 rentals. 

 - the reason for making aggressive payments is to build up equity by paying down the loan faster... as soon as I get to 75% of market value then I'll refinance using a traditional 30 year mortgage and back off on the aggressive pay down as i'm now out of the adjustable and higher interest rate commercial loan.

thoughts on this? anyone ever do something similar or any other ideas? I'm using a property management company to handle these for me as well I should add as my goal is to scale this to 20+ homes before I retire. I should mention that the cash I'm using for this start is not nearly all the cash I have on hand but it's cash the wife and I feel was a "gift" and therefore we are more willing to be somewhat risky with it. i'm suspecting real estate will prove to be less risky then the stock market as it's easier to understand for me than stocks. If we are successful with this investment path we will start using our other finances to really grow this out. 

thanks everyone for your thoughts / opinions.