I do however have the experience (25+ years) in design, architecture and construction AND i have over 500K in equity in my home (which is a 2 family)I would like to pull some money out of the home / borrow against the equity but again the banks will be concerned with the debt ratio’s. 

I have purchased 2 properties in my life made a ton  (to me)  in equity in my first home that got me interested but never moved forward because after moving to my next house lost a ton of equity after the crash.

My current residents is valued around $210000. The properties completely paid for. I'm a licensed residential real estate agent with less than 2 years of comission. I want to start leveraging my current home to purcha...

You have “lost everything” because you no longer have 300k in equity or 3 houses.

We turned our first home into a rental and the property has around 200k in equity and the return is 9%. 

We have about 250K in equity in our current house in Metrowest, Massachusetts.

All bought when market was down...One is almost paid off (owe 4K on it) ...One where I live has 200K in equity and third one has about 70K in equity (not much)...I am refinancing now the one that is almost paid off and probably will buy a fourplex...Not sure if negative cash flow is such a big deal...

So my wife and I are trying to figure out how to solve our residential housing puzzle...We're currently in a $550K house with approx $200K in equity...House is too big and we'd like to downsize to about a $350K home...problem we've run into is that I lost my job at the end of last year (and am now focussing on our fledgling RE business) along with a 6 figure income - we also own two SFR rentals.

Seller Financed or something like that)Right now you have no track record, which means you can't even work with a hard money lender, unless you find a smoking hot deal with enough built in equity to satisfy the need for a down payment. 

That way, after the investor puts $50K into renovating the property, he still has $150K in equity.