(Click to enlarge.)As you can see, financial freedom has two primary dependencies.

Tax Benefits: Talk to your CPA as you will have tax benefits both as a primary homeowner and on the rental income.

See if you can get a copy of The Millionnaire Real Estate Investor by Keller.The Slight Edge and Atomic Habits too.Awesome board with many smart people having own suggestions and ideas to grow wealth!!

I should hopefully have an independent appraisal  within the next few days.HELOC will be from primary residence. 

Great news for the local investors, bad news for the California absent landlords (our software catches/filters by property location and borrower primary residence, there might for example be a lender in California that lends nationwide but requires the borrower to live in their 3-county footprint, and every other configuration of that you can imagine).

Your wife will become the primary breadwinner.

Regarding paying off the SBA-HEDCO loan, the primary downside to paying it off early would be losing out on a relatively low interest rate.

I realize the LLC is for liability protection but my goal is to retire early and I want to phase into REI being my primary source of income.

My other purpose other than some hopeful appreciation over time is that my primary residence is 1 mile away.  

(PMI effectively raises your mortgage APR and is no longer a tax deduction on a primary residence.)If you really want to invest, what short-term sacrifices are you willing to make?