I am looking for responses from people that has used credit unions in the Chicagoland area and surrounding suburbs for HELOCS. 


Please let me know also what credit union you used.

@James Lusk thanks for the response and tip.

The upside is that there is no lien on the property.If you have the ability to do a refinance after a seasoning period, and the house is worth more than you paid for it, consider doing that and pulling out all your capital.If you use a smaller credit union, some will bundle multiple small properties into one blanket loan. 

With one of them, who applied, it ended up with him asking me to prove I owned the property and going over the lease with a fine-toothed comb (after he missed a couple of deadlines to get things back to me, I moved on and denied him).I figured the facts that 1) prospective tenants see the property and can talk with the current tenants to ask about the property and me, and 2) that they have to submit an application and go through a credit and background check, and 3) that I was using Cozy to collect payments and 4) that I am available by phone, email and text whenever they want, would be enough to make people comfortable that they are not getting scammed, but it was apparently not enough for some people.Does anyone have any tips to help prospective tenants feel more comfortable dealing with you from afar and not feeling like they are getting scammed?

Landlord does not report our on time payments to build our credit.

My main question here is do you have any tips on how I should approach the tenant/situation if they refuse to open the door.

My wife does not work and we have a good amount of "stupid" debt (credit cards/hospital bills/student loans) and not very much in savings and fair credit.

And listen to these podcasts there are tons of great tips, I listen to one podcast a day.

if not, that's a good way to go.Offer your time / skills / credit?