There is still plenty of room above how much the mortgage is.Honesty and trust are important and it seems you're not getting that.

Government will never succeed in "making" anything cheaper.

We want to rent out the basement as a one-bedroom apartment to defray the mortgage cost.

@Megan Alanhello. house hacking is a powerful strategy. in an ideal house hack you would:-pay roughly the same that you'd pay in rent, net to the mortgage. 

Thanks,A lot of lenders (mortgage brokers) utilize figure https://www.figure.com/home-equity-line/ if it helps you at all. 

I am new to real estate investment and planning to start ramping up long term rental properties in 2025, however my first two primary residences were both converted into MIL's and rented within months after closing which effectively followed the House-Hack tactic (we currently rent our furnished basement to primarily traveling nurses for 3-6 months at a time which covers 70% of our mortgage).

I wasn't really thrilled being forced to quickbooks online from desktop so I would like a different software for bookkeeping but need to retain my mortgage bank too. 

You may not want your heloc tapped that long as the rate is generally higher on a heloc than it is on fixed mortgage rates. 

Here's why:-Management: One property tax bill, one mortgage, one insurance bill, etc.

With such low rental yields, the return on investment (ROI) and cash-on-cash (CoC) return are negative when factoring in mortgage payments only, not including any other factors.In this market, it seems almost impossible to make a profit using traditional rental property investing strategies.