Look for safe accounts that pay good interest or dividends to grow your security.

Because I need cashflow proceeds to start being withdrawn in 2 years and not today, I'm looking for how I can build up the empire with a larger portfolio with continued investments beyond the initial $250k now.  

To be fair, I've encountered situations where the Section 8 rent received was higher than what cash paying tenants were paying.

Operating is where you collect the rents and pay expenses.

Is it better to keep adding equity by doing work on the houses while I'm renting them then refinance to recover the initial down-payment to reinvest into another property or to pay down the heloc?

For example if you think the house is worth 200K fixed up you need to pay 100K to afford the hard money loan and rehab budget and still have a profit.

You can use a SQ FT format to guess rehab but that is only good to initially look at a deal.

In the “old” days, people would have the seller pay the lender so as to not “alert” the lender that a property sale had taken place, so that the lender def wouldn’t trigger the so called “due on sale” that’s a part of almost every mortgage or deed of trust document.  

The key is ensuring the after-repair value (ARV) supports refinancing to pay off the initial funding without overextending.Fix-and-flip - This requires sharp numbers and market knowledge.

A tip is voluntary, so your tenant could agree up front, then refuse to pay.