Is There a Way to Avoid Capital Gains & Put Profit in my Pocket?

[AJ Howard]

Currently my wife and I have two rental properties and our own primary house. Both rentals have roughly 100k equity in them and we owe 200k on our own home. We are thinking of selling both rentals and paying off our own primary because then we are financially free. Then we can get back into flips, rentals or building affordable housing for people on a HELOC we can pull on the equity of our own home.

The only problem is that both rental properties will bring about capital gains. Is there a creative way to avoid those and put more profit in our actual pocket?

Based on some research we did for our state (Washington). We would be in the lowest taxed area of capital gains because we have one income (school teacher). So we are good there, but trying to avoid realtors and capital gains could make it possible for us to pay off our house completely. Thoughts?