Hello,So one thing to get out of the way from the start: the purpose of this post is NOT to debate whether or not there will be a softening in the Denver market.

@Sean WilliamsIf they aren't moving for job purposes, or some other exemptions, they won't be able to use the FHA loan since they purchased a home in the recent 3 years.You typically need 2+ years of solid rent income on your income taxes before lenders will use the rental income in the DTI calculations.

I wrote the above for informational purposes.

I like it, it does what I need it to do, and I don't like change,  so I haven't upgraded.I use classes to keep the income & expenses separate for each house (I have 12) for tax purposes, and to make it easy to see how each property is performing.

For tax purposes, the house was appraised at $97,500, but that is usually not necessarily in line with the sales price.

I seem to just be missing the underlying purpose of the buy and hold strategy as a whole.

As you said, only the interest is an expense for tax purposes. 

We definitely plan on living in the basement and renting out the top for that purpose of generating more cash.

Travel hacking or travel rewards has been discussed a bit on the Bigger Pockets Money Show and you can look at those episodes and go where the links take you to learn more.If you want to stick to just one card for travel purposes and ignore the whole travel hacking thing, even with my limited understanding I'm pretty sure that the Chase Sapphire Reserve and the Ultimate Rewards program is likely your best best.

So it’s exactly the same as if you were paying 100% in cash because the equity in your property is basically cash.If you have equity in a property in your home country that you are never going to use for any other purpose than buying a property in Mexico, by all means, take advantage of the HELOC’s low interest rate and use it to buy your Mexican property.