They can be used to offset other passive income or be applied against your ordinary income in the year of sale. 

Curious as to how much of it applies to your situation?

@Hector Espinosa Recommend you first figure out the property Class you want to invest in, THEN figure out the corresponding location to invest in.If you apply Class A assumptions to a Class B or C purchase, your expectations won’t be met and it may be a financial disaster.If you buy/renovate a Class A property in Class D area, what quality of tenant will you get?

The old saying about you make your money when you buy and not when you sell applies.

That statement about suckers being born everyday definitely applies to real estate. 

If there is no problem then the HELOC will provide more flexibility since the cash out re-fi may yield more proceeds after improvements when applying the 70 or 80% LTV limit whereas you might get improvement proceeds from an investment loan but you won't want to because there will be a lot of red tape, inspections, draws, lien waiver compliance and a lot of other crap they load onto improvement loans on investment property.

Seller seems to think the vacant pads are worth very little, and of the 1.2M paid, most of that goes towards the income producing pads (with homes on them)...because the "CAP rate could not apply to vacant lots".Does anyone with appraisal experience can shed some light on this?

We embrace S8 applicants, but screen them just like any other applicant.Many have an entitlement mentality and try to leverage their S8 voucher by pretending to be helpless:1) A percentage won't apply because they expect a landlord to waive application fees for them.2) Many cry broke and expect a landlord NOT to charge them a security deposit.3) Many of those same S8 tenants trying to avoid paying a security deposit, won't make an effort to call the list of nonprofits we send them that will pay their security deposit if they apply.4) A lot of them try to avoid paying for utilities.

I could send you a link to apply for the loan if you want.

Ideally, I'd like to avoid paying PMI which applies to my current conventional mortgage.