You may or may not be able to occupy the residence depending on what type of bridge loan you get and what the lenders guidelines are but if you are looking to do the refinance ASAP than I don't think staying put for30-90 days would be an issue. 

Yet it feels like the gamble might be too big, especially once you open up state databases and visually see sinkhole incidents throughout the neighborhoods.

I have never been at a bank or company that offers HELOCs so I am not sure of all of the requirements or guidelines that come along with them.

Only question is if X amount is worth the gamble.

But that's gambling on the future.

Allen,I checked guidelines on a couple specialty Umbrella markets.  

Like I posted earlier, there are reasons for the guidelines as they are for owner occupied and non-owner occupied. 

In this case, you will want to have some general guidelines about howmuch each type of project may cost, consisting of a range for each one of thoseproject types.

Louis, do you have any guidelines you’d recommend such as aiming for a larger city?

It is a gamble to hire somebody to do work for you, but at some point you will hopefully scale to where that is required.