I am looking for a lender that has loans that work like hard money but longer terms (2+ years) and  the criteria for the loan would be mainly the asset and not my personal debt/income ratio.

She is looking for freelance work to bring in some extra money.I can utilize her for working on my social media presence, SEO, and some other administrative tasks around marketing.I have already told her that it will probably be small tasks to start out with and I can't pay her anything steady until I start getting more deals and bring in more income as I scale.Curious what everyone is paying for this type of work?

It will ofset the income on your taxes.

As you said, we are pretty young in american market (but not in France where the income from rental cannot compete with what we can find in the us)What I mean by cap rate is annual NOI / money invested.

If you HAVE to put a rule of thumb on it I would say 50% of gross income goes to operating expenses, but again this fluctuates highly depending on the specific property. 

We really like it here, and I am interested in renovating and selling homes as an active income strategy. 

However, they will calculate a new DTI (debit to income ratio) based on the new monthly payments from your cash out refi or HELOC loan.Some quick pros and cons about Cash out Refi vsHELOCCash out Pros-tax free money-low interest rate-no monthly payments Cash out Cons-closing costs (couple thousand)HELOC Pros-tax free -its a line of credit, hence you can use pay back then use again-usually NO closing costsHeloc Cons-higher interest rate-have to make monthly payments on money borrowedHope this helps,CB

I'm looking to learn real estate to help people who need my services, create a passive income and live a life with more freedom.

https://www.airdna.co/region/us/north-carolinaThis site has a lot of info too:  http://www.rented.com/ultimateguide/This one has a calculator to estimate income - I was surprised at low occupancy (28% for Blowing Rock/Boone vs. about 70% in Florida)...  

Banks may in fact want more liquidity - since there is no income derived from owning land during the year.