What would you do? Real life Case Study from a 20 year investor

[Matt Concannon]

Scenario:  3 properties cumulatively worth $750,000.  Remaining aggregate loan balances: $100,000.  

My wife an I bought and mostly paid off 3 multi-units over the years (I have some others with my business partner/brother....not discussing here).  

What would you do?  Here is what I am currently considering:  

1.  Pay them off - Our goal has always been to pay them off and benefit from the cash flow currently $5k/mo. after expenses.  

For scenario #2 and #3...

I talked to a lender yesterday...no doc LLC loan (appraisals and credit score), 30 year fixed, 5% interest with no origination or points if loan is above $300k. Costs are normal, including appraisals, standard fees, and escrow account set-ups. Payment would allow us to realize $3k/mo after expenses right now and give us $400k to work with. (we currently are cashflowing $2.5k/mo)

2.  Buy several multi-units that would cash flow after expenses an additional $3,500/mo.  Would take a little patience to find the right ones...probably 6 months to find them.  

3.  Buy one larger deal at $1.6 mil with ???? returns.  Challenge here is that this type of deal is very rare locally.  And I don't think I want to go to another market until I can do a bigger deal of like $5-7 mil.  

Don't tell me what I should do...tell me what you would do?  (for background sake....*I have other properties with my brother, and my wife and I also invest pretty heavily in the stock market.  We feel good about where we are, but are small potatoes in the real world.)