Refi on first home into investment loan...affect future HELOC?

[Jonathan Amedrano]

I recently (about a year and a half) bought a 4 family home with my cousin through a 203k FHA loan. We completely rehabbed all the apartments and rented 3 of the units while living in one. Now we came to the point in which we want to refinance to get rid of the pmi and we are thinking of getting a HELOC on the property around November or so. My refi loan officer suggested to do the refinance as an investment loan instead of conventional in case either my cousin or I want to buy our own individual properties before a year from the moment of refinance (claiming that if we do a conventional refinance we will not be approved for an FHA loan on our own individual properties due to the fact that we are supposed to live in the house we refinanced together). My concern with going with a investment refinance loan is that we will have trouble with the HELOC in the future. Also dont know how much they would really deny our FHA if let's say we tried to get our own houses one month after the refinance due to not being able to live in the same apartment anymore.

Thanks so much for any help/input ahead of time. We are new to the real state game so any guidance is much appreciated.