Next Steps after First Duplex

[James Smith]

Hey everyone! A little background. My name's James and my wife, dog and I are currently househacking a duplex in Manheim, PA on an fha loan. 1st floor is 2bd 1 ba for $825 to a family that came on a month to month lease, they've been there about 4 years on the same lease. We pay water/sewer(not submetered), trash/recycling and gas heat. 2nd floor is a 2bd 1.5ba that was renting for $995 before we moved in. Current payment is $1300. Spent the next two years trying to learn as much as possible while saving as well. Hoping to have around 40k by the end of the year so long as nothing extremely significant surprises me. Just like everyone, I kept getting emails from my mortgage company about refinancing and inquired to see what it would take to switch to a conventional and out of fha. Mostly to remove PMI and keep fha as an option again moving forward. My wife and I both have remote jobs/could relocate and no kids makes it easy for us to move without much hassle. First loan was for 158k @4.625 and new offer, assuming appraisal of 220(duplex next to me sold for 220k 1.5 years ago guessing that's what she's going off of) comes at 3.625 with about $375 needed to close lowering my payment by about $200, or I could just pay closing costs outright, lowering my payment more.

I guess what I'm wondering is what does refinancing do to my ability to get a mortgage for a second property, is about 6 months the usual waiting period? Should I shop around my updated credit profile/offer? Does having a higher valued property effect my D/I ratio when looking for a second property? Or is it "offset" by verified rental income? 

Additionally, I'm considering a career switch to something more hands on to directly benefit our real estate goals. How do traditional lenders view recent changes in employment? Let's assume I made identical pay

Thanks in advance for any comments or advice! 

James, Kelsey, Dexter

[James Smith]

@Tucker Mortier if I'm being honest we lucked into this all. We wanted a house, and my wife's uncle stopped me to talk about a duplex route and rich dad poor dad (he has several college and long term rentals) he really guided us but between the wedding and buying a house he thought we should wait and save more. Our realtor told us about fha loans, this was about 2.5yrs ago, and amazingly after about 4 different showings we found a duplex in an area I grew up with a long-term tenant and one leaving in a month. We settled on 158k i think 2 days after listing on an fha loan. At the time it was a huge hassle having what we now know are extras from the bank. For example there was flaking (possible) lead paint on the exterior windows that had to be taken care of before closing. We did all the exterior doors ourselves. We also had to "tidy up" the electrical wiring in the basement and remove any knob and tube wiring. Any painted windows also had to be freed I remember. I'm sure I'm missing some requirements but from what we now know it's more "micro-managed" no AS-IS. Also on financial side, they really look/question every withdrawal/deposit. This was a stressor but might not be a problem for others but my wife was very stressed out we wouldn't be able to complete everything before closing with my job and planning a wedding but the sellers were very reasonable with everything required and the timing. You also have to live in the property for at least one year so without knowing we house-hacked. Again we lucked into putting 3.5% down on a duplex with rental history in a market we were familiar with that immediately rose in value pre-covid. We're looking to refinance out of fha to remove pmi but to also to have as a second option in the near future to probably move out of state and repeat but by eoy should be okay either way to continue this strategy