My question for the group is would my hours as a contractor also count twoards the needed 750 hours?

Always end with a question.

Good question!

Apparently @Ivan Castanon most want to try to sell you on something vs answer the question. 

Question- do I keep the heloc I have and just pay it down or do I get a heloc on the rental property to pay off current heloc and go forward with another property? 

What are your questions? 

Feel free to reach out with any accounting questions.

But I knew and had worked with a couple of hard money lenders often enough as well to know that they’d fund any purchase in the range I was looking to buy in without issue if my private lenders didn’t have the capital or weren’t interested.So to answer your question I already had several lenders in place that I had worked with previously. 

Back to your question on maximizing rent: In general, the better the neighborhood the higher possible rent.

When faced with scenarios like this, it's tough to answer such a specific question with limited information.