@Zac Ballin yes, you can have up to two houses per VA entitlement so the permanent roommate and I could theoretically do 4

Partner with the wrong contractor(s), and after one project you'll want to permanently close the door on RE investing.

It gives you some flexibility in your investing and perhaps allows you to have a permanent entity to pursue branding. 

The current plan is to get her in a cheap month-to-month lease while searching for a more permanent solution.

If I had to guess, prices will keep rising to extremes for a while yet and then suffer a decades permanent long decline aka mean reversion.

@Tucker CummingsWhen you borrow from your 401k and IRA you can not deduct the interest as investment expense as you are reimbursing yourself.If you borrow from a margin account you may be able to deduct the interest if the proceeds are used for investment.The leverage on margin is usually not very high and you are taking way more risk to trigger a margin call that will wipe out your profit if you need to fire sale during a market drop to satisfy it.I would suggest that you look at overfunded permanent life insurance policies as their cash value can be borrowed against very easily.Also they continue to compound based on the full amount even if you have loans out.

But if it is going to permanently become an investment property, you may want to transfer it in order to separate your personal assets and liabilities from your business ones.

so I've got about 125k of equity in my home and was planning on refinancing to capture that equity for my next project but no-one will loan because my employment isn't "permanent".

They know nothing about life insurance and annuities and are simply rehashing what they may have heard at one point or another.A properly designed and over-funded permanent life insurance policy is a great financial tool.

And here is a little nugget of insight often attributed to Alexander Tytler but unsubstantiated: A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government.