out of sheer curiosity what is the collateral for investments.. are they cash flow assets..

Cash Flow Potential: Rental income from real estate held in an SDIRA flows directly back into the account, allowing you to reinvest and compound your wealth tax-advantaged.

One thing you don't want to do is to buy based on proforma and have a negative cash flow property, especially on your first deal.

However, most of these properties still cash flow well (or enough to cover PITI). 

Hey everybody We own 8 rentals in Philly, we are looking to pull some cash out or get a HELOC in order to continue scaling.

Eliminate debt, establish a budget, and save.

No matter what you do I think you are going to have guests point out that something isn’t working which could lead to annoyance or requests for refunds or bad reviews.Plus, providing bottled water over the long term probably isn’t going to save you much money compared to paying a plumber to get the fridge connected. 

So basically in my mind this would not be a great financial move as we be accruing about 200k more in debt if we were to sell one house and take the cash from there and use it as a down payment.

I would like for the properties to cash flow but have no intentions of living off of the cash flow.

If you own (2) properties free and clear you could simply do a cash out refinance.