The best order to buy real estate based on our situation and the current lending environment?

[Carson Scott]

Happy Holidays, I hope everyone is doing well. I have made a basic plan for investing but was looking to get some input to see if I am missing anything obvious. I inherited a house worth about 500k which is paid off. I already had a house which I purchased in cash a couple years ago for 75k that rents for 1k a month. My goal is to buy as many houses like this as possible. What is the best course of action based on our situation. I recently retired and get a pension of about 1000 a month. My wife makes 70k a year and has about 15k in credit card debt so I am not sure what her credit score is. Do you think we should try to get a home equity loan to pull out 80% of the 500k (about 400k) then buy houses in cash with it (or try to put 20% down IF we can get financing) or just sell the house for 500k and try to buy houses all cash (or try to put 20% down if we can get financing). Our goal is to buy as many houses as possible in the 75k range that rent for about 1000, so I guess 20% down would be ideal. I kind of wanted to keep the house I inherited since we have a low property tax rate but apparently we can keep the same tax rate if we sell it and buy another house of equal or lesser value in the same county within two years (proposition 60). (hopefully prices will not go up too much in the next two years and we can qualify for a mortgage)
Would getting a home equity loan on the 500k house affect our DITI ratios negatively and reduce our chances of getting additiional loans if we wanted to leverage some purchases using 20% down?

Thank you for any advice.