Quote from @Lucas Hunt:  I will essentially be managing the entire property/collecting rent and my friend will not have to lift a finger.No offense,  but your friend would be better off buying the property for himself and paying a PM 10%.

I like that the HELOC functioned more as a credit card, and I only had to pay for what I used, so I had 200K of equity on hand, but only had to pay the interest on 120K.

Hey @Tomcy VargheseI am a local Houston Agent, investor and ground up developer.

Not only that but you are going to carry a Heloc in a 2nd lien position and you will not be able to pull out more cash unless you do a cash out refinance to pay off the previous Heloc and take out more cash.85% of the home owners who take out a Heloc refinance in 3-5 years so it makes more sense to simply do a COR and avoid the future closing costs.

Buying a home is the best Investment you can ever do, owning your own home, having the equity and most times its cheaper than rent.How do I overcome the rate, by paying the principal down!

We even said we'd pay more. 

I'm just gonna take the specs to local engineer or architect pay whatever consultation fee and have them review it.

I'd like to explore card operated laundry to provide that as an option for tenants, to offset the cost of running the washer and dryer while I pay for utilities. 

I am retired and working on career #2 and 2 of 3 of our kids have left for college - our oldest is headed to UConn for her PhD (6 years) and instead of paying to rent, our thoughts are to do a version of a house hack with buying a house/condo and renting out one to two rooms to offset the costs of her rent.

Well, at $0.05 per mile, a gallon of gas should be $0.85 to $1.15 to match what I pay in the EV MGP-equivalent.