New to this local market, I wonder whether buy and hold is a good strategies for this market (balanced between cash flow and appreciation for class A or B, I know cash flow is difficulty in general given today's real estate environment )?

Dave Ramsey is proud of you ;)There's no 'right' time to pull out the HELOC bc its a floating rate until you draw so it might be 9% today and 10% tomorrow and 8% the day after.

Your scattered approach is going nowhere fast (analysis paralysis) and is highly likely to result in someone taking advantage of you:(Recommend:1) Figuring out what investment approach suits your skills & risk tolerance2) Determining where in the US to apply your chosen approach3) Learning everything you can about that market4) Networking & building contacts & team in the market5) Doing a "test" investment in that market to make sure your expectations are met6) Investing more if your expectations are met.-- If not, go back to step #1 as you many have chosen the wrong approach!

Lakshmi it was great speaking with you on the phone today.

I had painters scheduled to paint the place today; postponed them because of this. 

Case and point today we spent 6 hours onboarding a new house in Kissimmee (outside orlando) whose prior cleaners did not care.  

But nowhere near what we could have had they been finished a year ago (200k or more each).We have one right now in Gatlinburg that we picked up from someone that got the foundation in and that was it and had to sell fast because of a divorce. 

I saw how fast the city was growing and decided to make the jump.

But today with Dodd Frank this would be totally illegal to sell to homeowners without going through QM process. 

My second suggestion is to change how divorce attorneys get compensated, which would be for the results and not how many billable hours they can rack up by making things more complicated and hostile than they need to be.That's all I had in terms of unrealistic ideas for today..