Refi the house so they can continue to live in it, they will get the best loans on their primary residence.

They are pretty simple loans simple interest loans ,1- 10 years .

10% down 2nd home loan and savings from the proceeds of already owned STR's.

Your VA loan will be crucial to your real estate investing growth, especially since it affords you the potential opportunity to own more than one property, depending on your overall allotment.For active military personnel, that conundrum of where to invest and where you will end up is always part of the issue that sometimes causes analysis paralysis so it's great you have one in VA Beach already.

Never used a DSCR loan in the past and have always understood those rates to be higher by a point or two in most cases. 

I will secure the loan for everything.

But it’s something I tailor the business plan to just in case.So your investor could get caught in having their loan called with not a lot of notice if things change.

Two things I remember that probably don't happen today: -First property was a no-doc loan, technically low doc because you still had to provide information but with 30%+ down pretty much anything you wanted was yours.

Doing a 75% 1st mortgage and 15% heloc or heloan would likely give you better cost of funds all around.If this is an investment property, you can do 80% cash out refi using NonQM loans such as DSCR loans, but at a higher cost/rate than if you stick with 75% loan to value. 

You will make more from loan pay down, yes you SHOULD have some appreciation.