Having a mindset of this 80% vs 20% (rich) realtors is not a good approach - most of the top producers have worked hard, established themselves in the community & followed up with good systems to maintain relationships with clientele.

The most practical ways to increase your return on equity are:- Increase rents or reduce operating expenses to produce more cash flow- Refinance your property, pulling equity out- Sell homes or properties that are producing, or which you expect to produce low ROE, and purchase new ones with higher expected returnsHope this helps! 

Are commercial lenders able and/or generally willing to use an income based appraisal on 2-4 units, if income based produces a much higher value than market based?

What I do know is I need to figure out how much I I'll get for my initial HEL and the highest mortgage I can qualify for for safely; then I can find a property that fits my price range, then I need to analyze the property to make sure it's going to produce positive cash flow, and finally I think I'm supposed to go to http://www.city-data.com and https://www.bls.gov/ to check out things like employment, construction, and mortgage trends in that area to really see if it would be a good investment for now and well int the future.

Many don't want to work with newer investors because they spend a lot of time with non income producing activity and the investor doesn't do any business.

I assure you they are out there.The requests you made are quite reasonable and if they cannot produce them, walk away. 

This property is a gold mine and will produce enough cash flow to pay back all investments fast!

In fact, laundromats produce incredible cash flow that's tough to beat.

Thankfully, both are producing solid income at the moment.

However it still produces very cold air and works fine at the moment.