Standard disclaimer I’m not a Financial Advisor and this isn’t financial advice.I’d buy REITs in your shoes.

This is our standard and role model for the US President?  

Look into local rental demand—perhaps that area can support a short-term or mid-term rental strategy instead of a standard yearly lease, which might boost your income.

All those states' metros are going to have a relatively tough time "cash flowing" with minimum down and standard LTR.  

I could likely see many things from the TCJA being made permanent, mostly procedural items like the higher standard deduction and child tax credit (Plus eliminating exemptions).

I'm going to make some assumptions:Normal Person Atake home pay of $10,000 per month, gets paid on the 1st spends $10,000 per month, pays everything on the last day of the monthpays loan off the standard way over 30 years, 150,000 3% 30yearsScheme Person Bsame as above but now he decides to take out a HELOC @ 3%.When he gets paid, he immediately puts the 10,000 into his mortgage and therefore has 0 Cash in the bank (but has $10,000 less on his mortgage).On the last day of the month he withdraws from the HELOC 10,000 to pay his bills.When he gets paid on the 1st of the next month he pays the HELOC off to 0.He continues this until the mortgage is paid off.

This was the standard procedure we had been following, and after the inspection there is a net14 payment that is, the payment will drop within two weeks if it passed inspection.

@Karl Kauper with a SF you can require the tenant to take care of lawn and snow, but they might not be up to your standards. 

You can even work out a base 5% and they get additional bonuses for beating the planned vacancy rates to allow them to achieve 8% or 10% of gross rents which is industry standard. 

The payments tend to be lower than a standard cash out refi, so if you end up in a tight cash spot, you have the flexibility to pay less for a bit until you get your bearings again.