Quote from @Patti Robertson: No, I'm not military and I will be living in the home fulltime.   

I own an investment home in Nashville.

The home is listed for sale.

You can do a cash out fixed equity line or second home loan towards the down payment of a new investment to keep your current terms intact.

My question is I have about $30,000 in cash that I am comfortable using, but would like to keep that and see if I can get a home equity loan (since it is paid off and I could get at least $200,000) and use that to purchase my first rental property.

Afterwards, the plan is to utilize my VA home loan to buy a multi-family property.

You can roll it to a self-directed IRA (SDIRA) and buy real estate or privately lend, but you couldn't do that with your personal rental otherwise you would blow your IRA up. 6.5% right now is a great rate...it's lower than what you can get a 30-year fixed owner-occupied home for.

Hey George welcome - I'm also in the same boat as an American invested both back home and in Japan.

Assuming #2, and rental income of $50k/mo (ex. 25 units @ $2000), how much would we reasonably expect to take home (Net rental income not counting taxes)?

You can adjust prices on booking.com so that they are higher to make up for the larger commission fees.