Advice on financing first STR

[Shaun Mcdonald]

Hi all,

New to the forum and have been doing plenty of reading through other threads, but have a bit of a unique situation I'd like to get some takes on.

My wife and I currently own a house worth about $750k with a remaining mortgage of $240k. We're looking to buy our first STR and we're thinking about a HELOC or home equity loan to help with the purchase price of the STR, as we only have about $15k saved for a down payment and while we're working on saving more, don't want to wait forever to dive in, as we've already passed up on a few great deals because we don't have the cash saved for a proper down payment.

Is it silly to consider taking a HELOC to help with the downpayment and initial improvements of our first STR? We have great credit (800+) and pretty strong income, we could almost take on the second mortgage without having to actually rent the STR, but we would need to adjust our current spending habits.

The STRs we're looking at are in the $275k - 350k price point fwiw.

Open to any/all advice or tips. Thanks in advance!