Be sure to let your insurance know you have that installed so they can reduce your premium. 

Setting up automatic payments for recurring expenses or using online bill pay services can help ensure that bills are paid on time and reduce the risk of missing payments.Overall, the key is to establish a consistent process for tracking and managing expenses for each property/entity to effectively manage your funds and ensure that expenses are properly allocated.

My primary goal with this initial investment property is to reduce my expenses by moving to a more affordable area where my PITI is less than my current rent.

These often have no PMI, reduced origination fees, lower than average 30 year fixed rate, and occasionally some closing cost credits. 

I usually avoid such youtubers but I am also seeing there are lot of houses sitting in the market for a very long time and the builders inventory is also rising and at some point, they will have reduce the pricess massively. .

You are able to shop closers to reduce these.

However, My previous tenants lease expired as I was going through that process and I decided to pause the refi which would have more than doubled my monthly payment and reduced cash flow to around $300. 

If it were to actually REDUCE costs, than efforts would be focused to INPUTS, to LOWER costs which lowers price.

And ideally, I am perfectly ok with managing the properties on the side of my w-2 job with my brother, but my goal is to get enough cash flow for myself and my brother to be self employed, and hire property management and any needed employees to reduce our workload as quickly as possible, so we can continue to expand into other investments.

Of course, your numbers for management fees, CAPEX, etc.. will reduce the gross number. but it should still be positive (CAPEX on a new build should be very low).