For example, if your house is worth $500,000 and you still owe $200,000 on your home loan, you have $300,000 in equity.

You could use a HELOC, but with VA loans you have an allotment so you can get loans on more than one home depending on how much bandwidth they give you.

A laundromat is certainly much easier to sell than a bakery or a real estate brokerage...The real magic happens when you combine both (biz and REI), one to generate cash, the other to invest, grow and tax shelter.

Your loan would be on a different property so no financing on the property you are buying. 

I love that you have specific goals for 2025 - I believe if we think it, write it, say it, and share it our goals are 10x more likely to come to fruition.Are you able to do option 2 and just house hack a 2-4 unit building and use a renovation loan which allows you to put down 3.5-5%I highly suggest getting to some local chicago meetup groups (we have an in person one on the 17th)...here is BPs list: https://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/521-real-estate-events-...I also have a full list of the chicago meetups that I can share with you too if that'd be helpful.

I will secure the loan for everything.

Since you will be renting it out you should get a conventional loan.

You would have to check the loan terms.

I focus heavily on the sell side and on the buy side only work with high net worth individuals so the newbie wanting a 400k multifamily with an FHA loan probably isn't for me. 

Here’s the bottom line; unless the deal is VERY large, or the sponsor is going to syndicate a large number of deals, the investor will make more money purchasing the property theirselves with a option low to moderate interest rate loan.