They "started their own company" trying to raise money and on the website they had quotes from some people who worked at large companies making it sound like testimonial to this person.

Sounds like a solid deal to me. 

Sounds about accurate.What you should be focusing on is hopefully you are getting a return(Cash-flow) from your rentals and you are not paying tax on that.This would be better in comparison, to other investments such as dividend or interest income.

As a beginner, I want to operate an ethical and sound business.

Vintage year is also very important, is this a c-class property (which it sounds like it is, maybe c-), B-class etc. 

If diligent and patient investing strategies don’t sound fun, you can always just throw it all into bitcoin.

Using your own funds to pay down your loan so you get a bigger loan sounds like a zero sum gain (aka IE using 1 dollar to pay down loan so you can net 1 more dollar from the new proposed loan) So how are you going to net more cash when spending 1 dollar to get another 1 dollar ?

sounds like you are on the right track - house hacking or BRRRR to jumpstart the journey is a pretty solid tried and true gameplan

This sounds suspicious. 

Your first post sounds like a purchase, but this statement "The $20,000 was when I refinanced and did HARP with Wells Fargo twice." makes it sound like a refi.If it was a refi, was this $20K an existing debt of yours that was not caught and paid off on the refi?