@John UnderwoodGreat piece of advice, definitely!

I'm also looking at Wells Fargo's non-owner HELOCS...They have a 1&3 yr fixed-rate promotion but has amortized principal payment (not interest only) and requires full-doc.     

My brain is exploding trying to piece it all together, never having done it before.

There are different stages of adding valueHypothetically if I would go back 7 years and own a piece of land outright with zero experience..I would spend money and pay a few consultants and engineers to get approvals for the best use of the land example 300 unit condo building..

The problem with this activity of trying to take away and shame people that have more is that so much of our country heritage was based upon free enterprise and not some sort of socialist or welfare mentality that so many people are trying to promote.

I've included this piece of information of course in my strategy for searching for future purchases in the area.  

Once you get good at it, you can generally do it in about 15 minutes...Btw, as I go through the house, I put a piece of blue painters tape on every little issue I see so that I can send my handyman back to fix things.

Again, the bank's don't have different policies but there is one piece I agree with.

The certificate program may be complete trash and they could just give you a piece of paper that means nothing.

Think of the tax piece separately.