If your game plan is to pay it off with prepaying all your money you absolutely need a HELOC however don't need to use.

You just have to get in the game, learn, and adapt as you go. 

I would guess that you have little or no experience running any kind of STR, and now want to get that experience on the back of someone else's investment, with little or no personal skin in the game, and that's not a good way to build an investment portfolio.

SB 9 sounds like a real game-changer for California investors.

It was just a waiting game going through the foreclosure process Lessons learned?

In my case I was lucky that I still kept half of my portfolio, so didn’t get out of the RE game altogether.

So you will need to have skin in the game.

I am a LTR owner, getting ready to move into the STR game.

Selling "Golden Tickets" has proven a dangerous game for many through-out REI history.

@Cynthia Lee Depends on your jurisdiction, your relationship with the tenants, and your end game plan.