The HELOC will show up as part of your total debt when they evaluate your assets etc for approving your loan.

We continue to re-evaluate this and are looking at Multi-family and areas within commute distance from Boise.

I have done a few SFR deals and am mainly focused on long term buy and hold right now, but interested in getting in to small multifamily and evaluating other real estate strategies.

And hire an outside inspector and general contractor to evaluate? 

For quick screening, do you use a number higher than 50% when evaluating Houston area properties?  

Perhaps some one equipped to evaluate the level of a slab foundation?

The same way you would evaluate any property.

The answer is to change your model slightly from a fix n flip model to a fix n rent n evaluate model.  

But instead of constantly fixing this: have you evaluated why it breaks?

So the first home purchase is scary but I think if your planning on living there for at least a few years you are more likely to do better purchasing it today than later.If you were purchasing this primarily as an investment my advice would be a little different such as do not pay retail, consider house hacking, your mortgage to expected rent is to tight to be cash positive with maintenance, vacancy, and cap expense added, evaluate exit strategies, etc.