At a bottleneck...what to do now?

[Carl Davis]

I currently live in a house-hack (single family home with mother-in-law apartment). We own a STR in Tucson AZ that was our old home. We purchased that home for 228k and is now worth 274k and we have a 2.6 percent interest rate on the mortgage. I still have access to the rest of my entitlement of my VA loan and have very little capital to buy our next house hack this year. The problem is the homes in the area we are going to move to (Utah county Lehi area) are way out of the price range we are pre-approved for. Should we take out a HELOC on the STR and risk losing the crazy low interest rate for possibly more cash flow in the future? Look for other creative ways to finance a new house hack opportunity? Or just continue saving more capital.

I am a realtor and active duty military so I don't have a ton of time but I can pay myself the BAC or just not take one as a discount on a property. What should we do moving forward?

Thanks in advance.