Last time I approached lenders I was approved for a loan with an interest rate of 9.5%, but that was when I was trying to purchase through an LLC so it was a commercial loan.

Bookkeepers who serve REIs have to have a good amount of U.S. tax code knowledge or at least have to know where to find the info.You're not going to get this for $4/hr.I think outsourcing other activities to other countries to take advantage of exchange rates can be effective but do yourself a favor and don't do this with your bookkeeping/accounting/tax advisory/tax filing/etc (anything financial).Just like Kristen Ambrose, we see really screwed-up bookkeeping records from these types of situations all the time.

The rebound came suddenly amid still very high interest rate environment.

I would do 5% (ish) increases year over year until I got to the desired rate. 

What is the vacancy rate?

But once its sold, its certainly not making you any more money.You'll get a more favorable rate by doing a reduced leverage refinance, but almost every lender will put some kind of a prepayment penalty on there (usually ranging 3-5 years), so you won't be able to really "pull" from the equity consistently without incurring some financial implications, so it really does depend on what you are looking to do next.

Despite higher interest rates for the mortgage (7.625%) and the HELOC (9.5%), we are still positive cash flow.

REITS that have lots of floating rate debt may be at risk of severe defaults in the near future. 

There is a MOUNTAIN of FREE and cheap resources out there to gain all this knowledge, the trick is knowing where to find it and to identify which is legit and which is BS.

Specifically, do you look at comps on the market or try to find what value would be based on the cap rate?