All alternatives welcome, I'm not beholden to my initial strategy.

If you was like me when you started I had to focus on hustling hard and looking for alternative financing strategies.

Yes I will be open to self-manage as an alternative option. 

A Taxpayer may identify as many as 3 alternate properties of any value.

Any other alternatives?

This is just looking at alternative funding strategies after those have been completed, which should be in the coming month. 

If I was buying a house to live in or buying an investment property from a real estate agent, I would simply apply for a mortgage, but is there an alternative for these off-market offers that I'm not looking at?

Alternatively, you could check out Facebook marketplace listings and see what room listings are actually going for.Expenses could be different than long-term also.

Going through the HELOC route probably sounds like the best thing considered, alternatively you could also potentially refinance - it depends on how much money you pull out and what you can handle monthly cost wise. 

Alternatively, you can do much better by house hacking a 4 plex and still get an FHA loan.