New investor just treading water, looking for advice

[Melanie Siegel]

I was directed here from an investing subreddit and am hoping someone can offer me some advice. I'm a newer investor (and part time Realtor) and I am having a hard time figuring out direction and what to do next. I currently own two sfh rentals. One costs about $900/month in total expenses (15 year conventional loan) and rents for $1150 (but will be increasing to $1250). We owe about $75k (bought it for $120k, 20% down) and it is worth $220k. I own half of it, along with my parents. The other costs us about $800/month (30 year conventional) and rents for $1300. We owe about $95k (paid $136k, put 20% down) and it's worth around $210k. While we technically put 20% down, we really only out 10% down on the property we own together with my parents, and got a loan from my inlaws for the 20% on the other property, which we figured was better since we are leveraging someone else's money. I live in a house that costs about $1000/month in expenses and could rent for about $1400, with about $50k in equity. I have been unable to unlock any of the equity in the houses because we show very little income, but we do have very good credit. What is the best thing to do going forward? We are considering buying a new home to live in that we can put a little work into and then sell so that we can rent out our current home (but this doesnt address our main problem, which is increasing income) or buying a small ~$90k home to flip and then rent/sell. We are also considering buying a lot and building, but think the cost to build is too high right now for that to be worth it. Ideally we would like to flip (father in law is a contractor and we can do most of the work ourselves) a house or two every year to make an extra $30-$50k to buy additional rental properties for long term investment, but the risk makes me nervous and I'm not sure how great my market is for flipping anymore (I'm in Phoenix). I'm assuming holding on to the current rentals is the smartest decision, but not accessing the equity is keeping us from moving forward as we don't have a lot of cash and income. My main goal is to increase income. We would consider any type of real estate investing, but just don't know where to start. I appreciate any advice!