If you allow pets what you must do is more frequent inspections.

@Esther AdeI frequently see investors work with a capital partner and give too much away in their split, as if the capital is more important than the sourcing and operation of the property.

This question gets asked a lot on biggerpockets, and is debated in the investor community quite frequently.

There's a lot of ways to start out and BP has a lot of info on each way to do so, not to mention familiar and frequent scenarios.  

You may want to, however, mention that aspect to them as this is probably not really their focus right now...Good luck and for all of us here again a lesson learned: check on your properties frequently, especially when in a sale process!

I'm in the cities frequently. 

If you only need some of the funds now and {may need} some later, then the HELoC frequently makes more sense.

I was always tempted to drop in first to see if it was an easy fix before hiring a pro because a heating contractor visit to push the mode button on a thermostat costs just as much as one to fix a real issue.I also subscribe to the theory that I need to be able to frequently see what I own.  

Or they don't do the nice round number, but their generic assumption for local Bay Area real estate is 1.2% when in reality places like Oakland and San Jose are frequently well north of that, and all of a sudden "my" PITI is the highest and the client thinks I am trying to cheat them on their property taxes or something.

Given that I live overseas, move around relatively frequently and work for non-US companies (and thus don't get W2s), I've found that the big banks have little interest in working with me despite a great credit history, good, stable income, roots in the US, etc. etc.