Or pay myself back with a heloc and then refinance out of the heloc later on?

You don't need to know everything to get started; you need a foundation to build on, and the rest will come through experience and then refining your education.You can build a basic understanding of investing in 3-6 months.

But it would give you time to save up for the 20% on a refinance in 2 years or give you the ability to use any equity gained to refinance in 2 years.

You don't need to know everything to get started; you need a foundation to build on, and the rest will come through experience and then refining your education.You can build a basic understanding of investing in 3-6 months.

We were also considering a cash-out refinance since we have a decent amount of equity.

And I’d like to build the single family home and refinance with a dscr loan.would anyone have any advice on this or suggestions 

I only plan to manage these two from out of state until we're able to refinance our second home as we're losing money on this particular house for rent as we bought this home last year. 

Focus on undervalued properties, prioritize high-ROI renovations, and refinance to pull equity for future deals while maintaining 20-25% equity.

@Jordyn Ohsnot enough info to helpbut if you're using a HELOC for the down payment AND getting a loan, then you're probably negative cash flow given that's 100% leveragei would never do that unless i were going to refinance in the short term

Then refinance it.I just don't have that amount of "cash" but i have enough as collateral.