The dream is to get a place where we can offset the mortgage with an in-law revenue stream.

This way you can show the bank there is a larger future income stream. 

The other idea is to keep renting it to have a small but steady stream of passive income. 

Maybe I could try out wholesaling in the bay area and rapidly pay everything off if that goes well, or I could make it big with a good software pitch or something.I poured my heart into that house, and it makes me sad to see the bank profiting from my blood, sweat, and tears.

He was right and lived to be 95.I appreciate your comments affirming what I did in paying off my mortgage, and I’d like to offer the following; I see two streams of thoughts amongst BP members, which I’ll summarize by pasting a quote by Scott Trench.

Yeah, the interest increases your debt but if you can buy a good asset now you'll be amortizing that debt much more easily with multiple income streams.

Not exactly sure what line of work you're in now but as a caveat if you have no other source of income, do not leave your main stream. 

With triple net or any single tenant with gross etc. when a lender does a loan where the only income stream is one tenant they do a current value and then a dark value at the same time by the commercial appraiser.One value is with building occupied by a tenant and paying rent.

Sniffing for blood in the water, ie a LL they can manipulate.Even doing everything perfectly, you can still end up with a bad tenant. 

So they did what any other red blooded American would do.