That actually is not the goal of most people.

If your goal is passive income, it's not going to be in New Jersey when you factor in cost to purchase, management costs, and rent to price ratio, but what you can get is steady appreciation.

Obviously the end goal is to build my own real estate portfolio, but gotta learn to walk before running and crawling before walking.

@Jin ZhangI would only measure pros and cons against a goal.

It gets complicated if you use a HELOC towards two separate projects as you would need to pro-rate the interest across the two projects.However, the answer would be yes, they would be deductible.

I’m still new to all this and my goal is to eventually move out of this condo, rent it out, and get a new house and rinse and repeat for a bit.

However, as I mentioned in my original post, my immediate goal is to move out of our current townhouse into a larger single-family home that better suits my family’s needs (we have a baby and a big dog).

Been moving along with this project. 

Purchase price: $205,000 Cash invested: $350,000 Our first project together.

Once you're ready, create a goal (e.g., "I will buy at least one single-family home, duplex, triplex, or fourplex before the end of 2019") and then do it.