Now is the time in the cycle to "harvest the equity" from your properties.

These equity harvesting schemes chop your appreciation down and prohibit you from keeping it in the family for inter-generational wealth (Prop 13 tax basis can be passed down, I personally will never sell bay area real estate... the venerable  @Jay Hinrichs has listed selling silicon valley real estate as one of his major regrets).

You want them to harvest it and take it home.

-Arlen Lol...ok I'm newer...but I've heard of refinancing...thought you had come up with some new way to get leads or something...lol.When you refinance, what percentage of your property can you go up to....several here say no more than 70% LTV but I've read there are some 80% LTV loans out there (maybe more)  and I feel that 80% would be a real sweet spot, harvest the equity -tax free :), stay away from PMI,  We started building models on 80%, but then I started reading that some never counted on more than 70% so we stopped that model...make my day Arlen and tell me you've been getting 80%+ with a low rate on 20-30yrs with a small refi fee....you don't have to tell me the bank but please tell me they are out there....if they are I'm having a beer tonight with my supper and will owe you one when we finally meet, just for lowering my blood pressure... cause those models looked way better for us than the 70% models looked.And that picture doesn't make you look a day older than 29 ;)

For those not acquainted with farming and ranching, it's feast / famine, running on credit until the harvest or selling the herd,flock.

You still have your Land I replant it and I pay all your harvest and severance tax's... great deal right..

He must do soil tests and enrich the soil, build new irrigation system, dig new agricultural well, build caretaker's quarters, plant trees, allow trees to grow for 5 years before he'll ever see his first harvest.

Latent untapped value that can be harvested by a new operator.

Another wrinkle in the argument I never even addressed is that the appreciation investor could harvest the appreciation - assuming interest rates were low enough - as they went and redeploy that money into other assets, increasing their return. 

I'd much rather be in a syndication that adds value, refi's out at year 5 or less, returns all or a substantial amount of capital to investors via the refi, and continues to hold and build equity into the future, then refi's again to harvest that equity.