Often the best risk, hassle and tax-free approach is to pay down debt.If you have a car note, credit cards, etc pay those off first. 

Quote from @JooYung Choi: You could consider going for a STR in a vacation market that will give you way more cash flow to pay off the HELOC quicker.

That's basically what I used propstream for the most and if I can pay 100 a month for resimpli and get those features and also the crm and accounting features I'd be happy. 

Quote from @Ricardo Lemus: For a newer investor, a good investment is a property that pays for all expenses with some cash left over.

This also begins YOUR title seasoning, so that when you're ready to take out a traditional mortgage, you can refinance and pay off the seller without a title seasoning issue. you can buy title insurance from the title company at closing. this is a good idea. 

I think that this niche pays off a little better than SFH's.

You won’t get the metrics like the pay down or the returns on the second note this way but you can get the accurate cash flow.

And, even then, hitting your rate target would still be extremely challenging unless you were paying points up front, in which case it would probably make more sense to just try to put in a bigger down payment (or pay down the balance if refi) instead and get better terms naturally offered at the lower LTV.

I take the approach of the investor pays me a fixed fee to learn this on their own so they never have to pay me again if they don't want to.

You get what you pay for with a bigger firm that is cheaper.