If you wee to wait the year, and if you were able to ge the appraisal to come in you would most likely be able to get the HELOC, BUT your best bet is to refinance to get the cash out. The reason I say that is that if you qualify for a conventional loan at 80% then you would also lose your Mortgage Insurance that you have on an FHA. You would save the next 4 years of Mortgage Insurance and get your money out. If you have any other questions feel free to ask at sean@spectrafinancial.com

LTV is your big issue presently so your home needs to appreciate or lenders need to reduce the guidelines. I don't see either happening with today's market. But it could change tomorrow.

You should be able to a year from now though I don't think that prices will move that far that fast unless you do remodeling that improves value.

Yeah, I know 100% financing isn't an option.
But, hypothetically, let's say in a year we get a $150k appraisal. Would it be possible to get around $12k out on a HELOC since that would only be 80%? I have been told both yes and no, so I wanted to get an opinion from this educated forum.
Thanks.

I don't know of anyone doing 100% HELOCs.