Rent on a 4 bedroom place may be $5000 monthly ($12,000 in Manhattan); rent it by the bedroom for $1500 per bedroom with access to all common areas.  

The best choice depends heavily on your end goal: how quickly you want to buy the next property and what you're looking to buy.Option 1: Cash-Out Refinance This is the most common and straightforward path for your situation.   

Fair points across the board—and I agree with the broader takeaway that rates aren’t “high” in a historical sense, they’ve normalized.What I was really getting at is that the normalization has removed the margin of error that masked weak execution for a long time.

@Benjamin Rosales this is a pretty common question - HELOC or Mortgage?

Yes—this is very common.

• Any common mistakes you see beginners make that I should avoid? 

I’m trying to better understand what’s technically legal vs what’s commonly done in practice, especially for long-term buy-and-hold investing.Would love to hear how others navigate this — especially from anyone with experience in college towns or high-density rental markets.Thanks in advance!

Good communication doesn’t equal good cash flowJob transitions are common, and USPS pay delays are real, but your mortgage doesn’t pause.

It’s that the most basic level of common-sense due diligence isn’t being done and that's not changing. 

It’s common for new investors to underestimate CapEx on 80–100-year-old properties.