Selling off my personal debt, selling off my fear!

[Joshua Schafer]

Hello my name is Josh Schafer I am from the Cincinnati area and I would like to see what all of your opinions are on this topic. I am selling my two homes now to end up with a paid off home and no personal debt so I can start my new rental path with less worry, and to make it easier to loan to on a larger scale. My goal is to make a good deal not find one something like a value add, in this case, I mean rehab and re-purpose an existing building. I know the power of leverage is huge in trying to grow but I am looking to have a stronger start going forward , I guess you could say. I got started in 2012 when the market in my area couldn't have been any better for a buyer. I was looking for something you hear about a lot on the Biggerpockets show which is house hacking. I didn't know thats what everyone was calling it at the time, but instead of looking for a duplex or a quad I was looking for a property with the owner owning the house next door as well. There were not a lot of options but more then I thought there would be. We closed on our places at the same time and now what we called our rental house is worth almost what we paid for the both of them back in 2012. on top of that, our home has gone up around $50,000 in value. My rental house has never had a loan against it you could almost say it was given to us. But you need to know most people didn't see a house there. Its a 2 bed 1 bath 980 sq ft block home on 1 acre that our friends called the chicken coop its was really nothing to look at but the bones were great. We put everything new on and in this house, from roof to siding and everything inside as been gone through entirely. we have $27,000 in the fix and its will list for around $120,000. I know that was a long story to ask a simple question, which is should I sell so my personal debt is gone? The single family home was great for the last 7 years but i would like to upgrade to more units under one roof and more of a buy and hold in the future, but I have doubts as to whether this is the right move or not. Thank you for reading and the feedback and sorry for the long winded explanation.