How to approach refi after renovations?

[Andrew Jones]

Sorry if this has already been addressed, but I found a lot of threads that were close but not quite the information I need.

My wife and I house hacked a duplex.  Over a period of three years we repaired and improved our unit, painted the exterior, did the landscaping and then rented the unit we were living in for $1,525 per month.  After this we moved in with my mom (shudder), non-renewed our tenant on the other side (I did another thread on that...cat hoarder) and flipped his unit.  We are signing a lease with the new tenants tonight for $1,550 for a total income of $3,075.  Our outgoing for utilities, mortgage, insurance, cap ex, etc ranges from $1500 to $1800 per month so we're cash flowing comfortably.

The next part is the financing. We refied last summer to get my parents off the loan (they co-signed) and we're happy with our interest rate so we'd prefer not to do a cash out. When that refi happened our tenant was paying $1,150, but they did not use that full amount because he was initially paying $990 when we purchased. They doubled his rent to come to a $380k valuation based on a multiple of rents which was decent for it being owner occupied at the time. Now that we've moved out I'm having a tough time finding a good HELOC at a 65% LTV non-owner occupied...you'd think that would be plenty?

So here is my question: what does the HELOC process look like? I have year long leases with both tenants and Sacramento (where property is located) has less than 2% vacancy these days. I'm turning away qualified applicants right and left. Will a typical bank or credit union use our current rents to determine value/how much credit they'll extend or will the rents need to be seasoned a few years like the guy who did our refi said? A step further, who do people recommend in the Sacramento area? Any referrals or loan brokers on here?

[Gordon Cuffe]

@Andrew JonesThe challenge is finding a non owner heloc at any ltv. Owner occupied heloc's are out there but non owner heloc's went away in the mortgage crash of 2007. We have  a bunch of lenders, and i dont think any of them do non owner heloc's. I will ask a couple of them to see if any do a non owner heloc.