I am self employed but want to build a spec home using the equity in my house as collateral.

We're ramping up to offer seller financing in BR this year, and we buy seller finance notes in LA in some circumstances.

VRBO bookings have been down Airbnb bookings have been up, but it has its own problems like siding with a guest who trashed my house with unauthorized party , truly if I had the time I would try to get off these platforms and go direct to customer, easier said than done. 

House hacking is the best tried-and-true method for new investors in my opinion.

For example if you think the house is worth 200K fixed up you need to pay 100K to afford the hard money loan and rehab budget and still have a profit.

I get a lot of questions about housing vouchers and how you determine rent amount allowed.

https://www.har.com/content/department/newsroom?pid=2141Houston Real Estate Highlights for December and Full-Year 2024:
-Following two consecutive years of declines, single-family home sales rebounded in 2024 with 85...

The loan is with you, not with your tenant, so none of that means anything to them - in fact because you live in one unit and it's under 4, if you were self-managing you don't even have to abide by fair housing laws (at least on the federal level). 

Even if you rent the house for $2,000 a month, you will still lose because of maintenance, vacancies, and the expensive mistakes common with newer investors.You can borrow up to 70% of the equity.

When the housing market became seller friendly, I unloaded 5/6 of our long term rental units, paid off our house with that and invested in stocks and mutual funds…completely no fun, right??