Your best option for the remainder of the renovation costs may be credit cards (assuming you're comfortable with that) I'll probably avoid the credit card route even though it's only a temporary situation. 

I would either have it professionally done, or remove and replace in your situation.

He has been semi retired for the last 4 years and it is not looking good on the refi right now due to his heavy income drop.What suggestions/referrals do you guys have for this situation?

Question is, do some major banks offer HELOCs on investment properties or am I going to run into this situation often?

Eventually I’d love to get in to apartments, mobile homes or even storage unit facilities but I have to learn to flip over, before I can crawl, before I can walk.

I’d recommend the same if your family situation can handle it.

Obviously the cash flow would go up on the four now paid off units, so that would likely have it's own tax situation change.Is that 400K that was taken as 'cash out' on the original property still deductable since being used in the rental business?

And if we are too far from the city and we’re forced to use our own water treatment facility and sceptic tank what’s the pricing on this?

I can’t afford anything in the NY Metro Area at the moment, so I’m exploring areas in:my home state of Vermont (Southern VT mainly)Keene, NYPittsburgh, PA where my brother livesKingston, NY (Upstate NY area/Catskills)North Adams, MA (college town)I’m trying to stick to areas I have some ties to since it will most likely be an out-of-state situation with a property manager.My goal is to buy a 2-4 unit property that is in decent shape, rent the units, and have one unit for myself to come to when I want to get away from NYC.I’ve been running numbers on both the rental property calculator and the BRRRR calculator with varying results.

This is very doable for me given my current financial situation, however after two friends recently expressed interest in moving in, I was thinking of "house hacking" and renting two of the rooms to them to offset some the mortgage.