HEL's = You are trading future equity to receive a smaller portion of the equity today.

VA loans can be assumed by anyone (investor, veteran who doesn't want to use their entitlement, and non-veteran) so long as the seller is willing to leave the portion of their entitlement that they used with the house.

By doing your work in house, you eliminate quite a large portion of the expense category.  

A hybrid deal in this case would just be taking over the house via subject to and then having the seller carry a portion of their equity in a 2nd position lien.

Interest Expense- when you do monthly "P/I" payments there is a portion for interest expense and principal paydown. 

We are similar in the have enough, but my RE holdings likely make up a bigger portion of my portfolio.  

Go for it.Just don't sign up with a brokerage that will charge you monthly fees.You sound like you have a lead source through what you do as a firefighter and you should follow your first mind and become a direct source for those people your getting acquainted with and building rapport.

This cuts out a big portion of the potential buyer pool.  

These are the best options for finding sellers willing to transact in today's market at cap rates that make sense to the current interest rate environment, in order to capitalize on the upcoming favorable market conditions over the next few years such as spiking rent growth, falling vacancy, and compressing cap rates.Interest Rate ProjectionsLooking at the Federal Reserves Dot Plot, which is released every quarter and is the federal reserves outlook on where they believe the Fed Funds Rate, which does not control fixed-rate financing but does influence it, as well as directly affects floating rate financing, is predicted to be 3% - 3.25% by Year End 2027 (Source), currently sitting at 4.25% - 4.5% today.

I was able to qualify for about $95k in 0% business credit cards (for 12 months), I then liquidated the cash and used a portion of that to obtain the hard money loan that covered the balance of the purchase cost.