Why would you literally wait until the last minute, when a flat tire or difficulty finding a parking space be the difference between keeping and losing your home?

If you lose your source of primary income, do you have enough cash to make it through the crisis? 

@Sebastian Albors House hacking with live-in renters definitely started to lose its appeal to me as I got older.

Meaning if the borrower stops making their payments the investor can lose all of their investment.

@Rafael Ramos All your goals contradict each other:(1) Cashflow: buy Class C & D properties2) Appreciation: buy Class A & B properties3) Low Crime: buy Class A & B properties4) Why would you want your investments to lose money to lower your taxes?

Hopefully, if you are reading this, you will not be lured to actually invest without diving much deeper into how any capital raiser or direct sponsor actually goes about creating that return. 

These deals end up sitting for a long time and they lose on it or breakeven.

@Tom HallAt 7% if you can I would pay it down as investing it net after tax gains may not get you the 7% you are paying - so it’s less riskDownside is you lose liquidity of that money as it’s tied in your propertyIf rates come down in future you can refinance and even take some of the cash out.Regarding your question are rates coming down, a lot of factors come into play but right now it does not appear there will be significant changes to rates over next 3-6 months.

The problem with that is that now you're no longer tracking what you've paid to actual vendors, so you lose the ability to issue 1099's and know what you've paid who at the end of the year.  

People focus on the rates because they are a singular number and easy to understand but you can lose money on a rental at a low interest rate and get rich paying a high interest rate.