HELOC is just a line of credit like a form of credit card that allows you to tap into your equity at your convenience and the consumer can always payoff the line if they wish to get the full line amount.

Abating the odor (tobacco and Marijuana) is costly and time consuming. 

They have a place they could potentially close on by the end of the year, but its new construction and the closing is subject to change based on the builder (and the area was just in the path of Beryl, so that timeline could have been impacted), so if that's the only thing they're thinking of exchanging into, I'm inclined to suggest they consider consuming the losses now for simplicity's sake, especially if the exchange timeline can't be guaranteed to work out.

Good to have a healthy balance in the relationship! 

But here is a healthy measure of living large.

The “headline” CPI (Consumer Price Index = inflation) for June declined 0.1% month-over-month, and the “core” CPI (excluding food & fuel) rose only 0.1% MoM.

Assuming the property is equally owned 4 ways (25% each) you could have the property appraised for confirmation of value: $1.8M/4 = $450k/share x 3 = $1.35M could be obtained as a cash out refinance, potentially utilizing a healthy portion of the STR or projected STR income to qualify. 

As more and more states see flipping “wholesaling” residential real estate where a homeowner is involved as needing consumer protection the fantasy of no capital no experience easy entry in this field will be eliminated (good riddance!).  

So free houses will be a while, but I do worry about a shift in the job market.My gut feeling is we will see unemployment depart from the ultra low 3.9% it is now in the next couple months, which has more to do with consumer spending than with AI.

Besides real estate investing we are passionate about family, small farming, growing healthy foods, and building community.