@Walter Ciucevich If you are holding these as rental properties to produce income, I am not sure why ARV is important to you.

It would probably help if the story you told was about accessing the equity to purchase further income producing assets rather than fly to the caribbean and buy an Audi.By putting together a small but professional looking package and going to sit down with some community banks in person, I think you'll get a tremendous amount of experience and straight feedback on what's possible or not and why.Good luck!

If it has rent control then the rent appreciation is constrained and rent control affects market appreciation.I have purchased a property that penciled out at cash flow neutral (including vacancy, maintenance, cap expense, misc costs estimates) that produced great ROI. 

Most will not coop with other agents who produced a buyer.

@James Maness, If the properties held in your IRA produce enough income for you to live on - you could access your retirement funds prior to normal retirement age without penalties.

My family, particularly my sister and dad both of the whom have professional real estate experience, has been instrumental in helping me identify the income-producing property I currently have a contract and am looking to close on.

On top of this I have a decent paying job that is also producing enough where even if I didn't have that 250k I think I could start with something smaller, maybe even partnering with a friend who's similarly interested in getting into real estate.

You should sell this property since rent at $1350 on a 350K property is about 2K below what it should be to produce positive cash flow on a leveraged property.

Most would say, YES, pull the equity if you can use it to leverage other properties and produce cash flow.

I have looked at what's available only though sites like Zillow, trulia, Redfin etc. and have found a couple that are producing the results I am looking for.