In other words you have a stock portfolio that you don't want to touch so you use those stocks as collateral for a loan.

Using leverage to buy an asset whether real estate or a stock or a business adds more risk to the equation. 

The worst a seller can do, is say no.On average, you can get a 7% return by simply investing in the stock market, I would personally like to shoot for 12% or more.

There would not be any gift tax implications as the ownership interest (new partnership interests or stock if a Corp)  has no value and your can do unlimited gifts to spouse. 

Like many of you, I’ve put in the hours and years at my day job, saved, done the right things, and realized that I need to be doing more than relying on stocks and 401(k)s (I’m not a fan of mutual funds).

Stock market?

If my math is right, if I owe $60k, use HELOC to pay that off, rental appraises for $140k and I pull out 98k (70% of value), back back HELOC and have $38k plus 68k for fully stocked HELOC.

I feel like I could be pretty resilient from investing in the stock market for a few years but I guess I will never know if a bad deal would permanently scare me off or not since I've never owned a home before.Do you think rather than finding an amazing deal it would suffice for now simply to find something that could reduce what I would be spending on rent somewhere and then continue to search for good deals?

She predictably 'freaked out' after the fact as things were being moved and had already been dropped off at Goodwill. 

So far I have  real estate mutual funds, REITS, stocks, and Fundrise.