While I'm actively exploring various avenues to improve our financial situation, I keep running into dead ends.

But people make the mistake of pulling equity with an old furnace and then that comes up in the dead of winter.

After about a year of dead ends through the MLS, I was referred to my agent from a buddy who had purchased 2 SFH's using him.

We found over a dozen dead animals in the house when we turned it.

Other than lowering my DTI ratio (which is what I'm focusing on now), is there another way to realize that equity or am I stuck with dead equity until I can get that ratio to a better space?

The good thing of living in Hawaii is that there are tough names to pronounce so if they can not pronounce the name of where your property is then run....lol.

September is a super dead month, maybe even deader than May. 

Yes there are plenty of MTRs on apps, also corporate housing a la Avalon (used to be Oakwoods - that's where they parked us film students from out of state back in the 2000s - the place was flooded with kids in Jan), and pilot season is mostly dead, but I feel that this market would always have a few folks coming in. 

Despite every plumber telling me that speaking with the city and the utility company was a dead end I was able to eventually get to the #2 guy at Citizens, the utility company.

Bill's point is dead on for tax purposes.