I own my home which has 80,000 in equity and I have 20000 in cash reserve on top of the 120000.

I have 2 other rental properties with about $200,000 in equity, but I don't think cash out refi is an option. 

I was asking for a 100k HELOC, and have a 775 credit score, over 100k income, 300k in equity based on their appraisal.

You can make more money with the same money leveraged than you can having that money tied up in equity.  

@Wayne BrooksThe property is worth $75,000, so there's $45,000 in equity.

We would gain at least $50k in equity after completing some minor upgrades, and once a retail project down the street is completed we could have even more.But the purchase price would still max out our budget and nearly obliterate our savings rate.

And the rents aren't enough to pay the mortgage so now the landlord has lost 300k in equity, has a house he needs to put money in each month because the property doesn't cash flow and to add insult to injury he is now land lording in one of the more unfriendly landlord states in the country?

Take the cash from the cash out refi and by some rentals that will cash flow positive and have built in equity.

Before doing any work to the house, I had almost $30K in equity.

I can probably come up with the $300k we have probably $300k in equity in our home and our 401K is probably approaching $1M, and I have a timber property in southern VA that has $150K in equity.