This will put you well ahead of many competitors. 

Basically this HELOC is like a credit card, and if you pay it down they will actually give you a literal credit card that you can swipe at the gas station if you want to secure your car gas bill by your home.

Lower-end houses you may see too thin margins or elevated risk and higher-end houses your profit margins will end up considerably higher than your competitors and you'll likely close fewer deals.- This assumes that your financing costs aren't tremendously high, as they sometimes are with hard money lenders.- This assumes your happy with about 12-18% ROI on your invested capital (for an all-cash deal).In my opinion, there are better ways to evaluate a deal. 

Hi,I've been in the process over the last couple of weeks looking into a cash-out refi on my 4-plex to re-invest into another like property. I'm at the stage where I've submitted almost all of the requested documents ...

A good broker will keep you apprised of rates each day in your strike window and will have backup lenders if your bank decides to pull a bait and switch after you are locked in to an appraisal that one lender has to "release" (even though you paid for it) to go with a competitor.

A real estate agent is your competitor and usually available free to buyers.  

If you have the relationships and experience, you may be able to find money from a private equity firm or a hedge fund, but typically they are your competitors, not your lenders.  

You are still facing competitors bidding the same property--to me that means we probably have to watch the economy move down some more before we are in a full on buyers market.Some experts were predicting a recession/depression to hit in January 2021, but it seems the governmental stimulus has moved it into a sort of slow burn (massive layoffs, higher taxes removing discretionary spending money from peoples pockets, etc...), with the San Francisco Bay area taking some hard hits.People are not yet feeling the true "Hard Times" that comes along with the bad times, such as 07 or the early 90's  with foreclosures (and Ramen Noddles) being the word of the day for most of the USA.Then good deals will abound.Just my 2 Cents.

As part of the project I was supposed to do competitive analysis to find out what the competitors were doing.

This was planned by big banking competitors during the conception of the federal reserve system in 1910.