Treat this first year as a chance to gain experience and refine your approach.

if you meant that you'd buy in cash, fix them up, not refinance, and hold... then I don't think I understand how you envision that working."

Best part is 1-2 years a refinance will make our numbers look even better and we are seeing our home increase in value because of both the forced appreciation via rehab and being in a growing market.If not married, I would have chose area first based on rentability.

•Consider a cash-out refinance with a lender that focuses more on the property’s appraised value instead of just the income.

Look into the BRRRR (Buy Rehab Rent Refinance Repeat) strategy.

I personally don't like a HELOC unless it's for short term costs that will have an easy exit strategy - ie: a BRRRR - use a HELOC for the rehab, then refinance and pay off the HELOC.

Also, the property is currently paying me to own it through cash flow.My main goal in my LTR business is cash flow … I’ll tell you right now that I can, of course, cash flow better in northern Minnesota where the average house costs 100k and I have the power of leveraging cash out refinances which is my biggest issue in CR… my money is stuck in the property.  

You don't need to know everything to get started; you need a foundation to build on, and the rest will come through experience and then refining your education.You can build a basic understanding of investing in 3-6 months.

If you do not have those it will extremely hard to ever sell it to someone who will require bank/lender financing or refinance it down the road if you want to pull out cash on the ARV or future equity.The other rule of thumb is that you buy it New and that it was never on another property or location, simple built onsite or trailered in from warehouse. 

If a cash out refinance, many lenders will allow the cash out to satisfy the reserves requirement.DSCR lenders generally let you vest either individually or as an LLC.