I don't think it will work for my current situation though.I'm curious: How does a 1st position HELOC help pay down the mortgage faster?

You could try some wholesaling or flipping to grow your equity faster.

The better the deals you buy, the faster you'll create wealth, but as long as you hold, you should come out ahead in the long run.Buying turnkey is a slow wealth builder with low-involvement. 

My wife and I have been slowly growing our SFH buy-and-hold portfolio and are now at a point where a) we want to grow faster and b) have gotten to a level of sophistication where we feel we've outgrown our existing accountant, who is not an expert in REI and doesn't proactively bring tax saving strategies to us. 

It will give you more credibility with your friends and you will get more experience faster.

Consider doing siding if/when you sell in the future if that will boost your final sale price, make it sell faster and/or have a good ROI in consultation with your agent.

if i had half a million to invest into property and did not know where to start, would it be wiser to start by buying an apartment complex then go from there or would it be wiser to buy multiple four plexs and then move up from there where after i have payed off all of the properties i am able to cover the mortgage for the large property to help pay it off faster.

But even so, a good inspector is worth his weight in gold.

Houses are going under contract even faster (as if that's even possible).

A ton of wholesalers and flippers, but not a lot of developers.  1) I've never tried getting financing to buy the land, I typically buy my land cash so I'm not incurring holing cost while waiting for approval 2) it should not be difficult to get a construction loan, I know lending one offers new construction loan, for my deals I've got a private  lender that borrows me money 3) The way I structure my deals, I'm paying out of pocket for all soft cost engineering, architect,  soil test, impact fees, I left out 2 critical steps on my initial write up Soil test: I'm ordering a soil test as soon I put the lot under contract, the cost is about $500, the county would want to see the result of the test when submitting your stormwater management plan Impact fee: Make sure to check with your county, some counties have them and some don't impact fees could be huge, in my county depend on where you build impact fees could be as much as $25k or $12k 4) I try to get as much as I can get done while under contract, In my county the typical turn around time is about 4months, while in Baltimore county I know builders that will close today and break ground the very next day, they have a faster permit process