you may have to save up until you have enough money to do so - down payment, closing costs, reserves, etc.House Hacking: What Is It, How to Start, and Strategies for Successit's a more powerful way to get started. 

The best deal I can find today is one that you buy cash, invest a rehab and when you pull out 75% of your ARV you leave maybe a small amount of money in the deal and you break even (BEFORE DISCOUNTING FOR VACANCY, REPAIRS, etc) Yes that means you leave like 10-25k in the deal and your payment becomes $3000/m and your rent is $3000 a month or slightly less.This is for my local market and for Class B or higher RE. 

Your $80K HELOC can serve as the down payment, as most lenders require 20%-25% of total project costs upfront.

However if you have enough reserves, 6mo or greater then I'd say chance it but a couple of missed payments from the tenants and you have to foot the payments out of your own pocket.I'm all for taking risks but I think you really need to evaluate the age of the major systems so you don't get hit with a bunch of cap ex all at once as well as your reserves. 

Let your criteria do the filtering for you.Regarding retention and renewals, the only time I have asked people to leave is when they have had rent payment issues and/or damaged the property. 

This is the equivalent of a car salesman pitching the "monthly payment" of a car instead of the actual price of the car.

If you’re patient and methodical, though, cash flow can absolutely become a reliable income stream.Hope that helps!

My client had some things come up that prevented her from executing, but these were some of the options I had put together for her, a regional bank, a regional CU, and a national bank.Reminder that NOI sizes CRE debt, and that's often what determines the down payment requirement, not anything to do with the client or particular lender, just the property itself.

.$150 x 12 months = $1,800If you put $45,000 into real estate as a down payment, you are looking at a 4% cash on cash return.I would consider this decent.If you put $20,000 into the deal, the cash on cash return is higher and its better.If you put $200,000 into the deal, the cash on cash return is lower and considered worse.However, cash on cash return is not the only return you should consider, you should also consider appreciation.My benchmark is trying to achieve atleast an 8% return between appreciation and cash flow.Best of luck!

@Mitchell RosenbergAnother approach is the elimination method.