I'd start by looking at where the money is going and how to increase your income and lower your spending. 

As a result, you might end up increasing your taxes by delaying income and accelerating deductions.Did I miss something?

But wondered if you were able to flip some houses during your run so that you could buy down the houses you have today and increase your cash flow to allow you to quit.Some great stuff.

If JC is a must, that's fine you'll do well with appreciation and rent increasing depending on the market with in city.

If an asset is throwing off a certain yield that is not commiserate with it's risk, then investors will then begin paying more for that asset, thus decreasing it's yield....or start paying less for the asset which would increase it's yield, until it was at the proper risk/return rate to produce the yield that is truly reflective of it's risk.The problem is novice real estate investors get the risk/reward correlation backwards.

I'm also a former math teacher, so trust me, setting up an S-Corp for operations is NOTHING compared trying to get 30 twelve year olds at an urban school to learn math according to state standards.

I figured the minimum increase to list in auction from the year before would have been enough.

Most service or trades people us included increase the rates for customers we don’t want.  

You can refinance sooner than that but you'll need to paper trail all of the improvement costs that lead to the increase in value.

@Celine Li Recommend you first figure out the property Class you want to invest in, THEN figure out the corresponding location to invest in.Property Class will typically dictate the Class of tenant you get, which greatly IMPACTS rental income stability and property maintenance/damage by tenants.If you apply Class A assumptions to a Class B or C purchase, your expectations won’t be met and it may be a financial disaster.If you buy/renovate a property in Class D area to Class A standards, what quality of tenant will you get?