My personal feeling is that I'd prefer to take advantage of this opportunity and centralize my focus on a fixer up over something more turn key because my ceiling for building in equity would be higher (with the right deal of course). 

Is it better from the start to wait to try and find deals with built in equity?

Maybe look into taking out a heloc home equity line of credit on your current house if you have 100k in equity like you say.

With my last property there was $10,000 in equity (just finished the refi yesterday) after the renovations.

Good strategy to get your cash in and out then move on to the next deal, keeping the rest as built in equity of ~25%We recommend keeping as little cash in the deals as possible because now there are many ways to maximize returns instead of paying down mortgages.

Hi BP,I have property with built-up equity, and I was planning to sell and trade up (refinance doesn't work for me).The problem is, that I believe that the costs associated with trading a property are too high.Please see what you think of this calculation:Property value (i.e. sell at): $200,000.Loan: $100,000Equity after sale (assume 8% cost of sale):  $84,000Cost to buy a new property: $6,000So, my equity in the new property is: $78,000Assuming I need to put 30% down (investor, >4 mortgages, buying 2-4 unit), this allows me to buy: $260,000To keep things simple, let's say I cash flow $200 more a month in the new property, and let's say I pay down the same amount of principle, and the expected appreciation in the same in both properties.Additional gain: Cash flow: $200 * 12 = $2,400Appreciation: At 3% appreciation, the new property makes $1,800 moreSo I make $4,200 more per year, but I lost $22,000 in equity !!

It's almost been 2 yrs and it already has $25k in equity.

All said, after the first year of rehab and re-positioning, I will be looking at around 80k in equity above my down payment, and about 22% cash flow based on my initial investment...

If you feel good about this, then you're in a safe place and should let it ride for a few more years until you have another $50k or more in equity and houses are selling for $500k.  

Right now my wife bought this as a first time homebuyer and didn't have to put much down.House has $40k+ in equity from what she paid so I took a chance (just had it appraised).