That area can be pretty tough with tenants. 

Joe its all about NPV  and rate of return for investors.. either way your going to take a pretty big hair cut out of your equity to do what your wondering about. 

My other SFR notes have interest rates determined by the borrower's cash, credit score and income - so market rates or higher.I understand the difference in performing vs non-performing notes and that performing can become non-performing pretty easily. 

Most everyone is right, things are pretty much the same, my tolerance is different. 

A HELOC felt like the right approach, but I'm learning it's pretty impossible to find a lender for my situation.

Someone posted this video link in another thread...pretty good at explaining...Youtube Hard Money Lender

I am in Florida and we have a strong STR market and most of my buyers bought at high rates and using AirDNA we were pretty spot on for the numbers and we were successful in being profitable.  

CT isn't cheap so if you plan on doing it there you are going to surprised at how poorly you do. maybe in the suburbs I'm not sure but as much as I know people call us from CT and everyone is rich and has lots of money and things are expensive out there. build to rent is a great model. we build 3 story walk up infill and keep it to the residential side. 3 units is the most units before it's commercial and you need engineering, etc. check comparable and things liek that. we came up with this design a year ago and we sold 10 if you want to talk further please DM me happy to connect. there are some great build to rent conferences. we went vertical not horizontal with it to save on build costs and design to fit on any infill lot. this fits on a 3500 square foot lot. most lots in our area are 30x120 or 30x150. in miami where I live now they are 50x100 or so. but any infill lot we can pretty much get this one on. there are some great build to rent conferences coming up too that if you like this topic I'd recommend attending I'm sure you'd learn a lot.  

Hey @Max Smetiouk, so we have a pretty rural lake house.

Pretty sure that is grounds for legal action against the PM.