To your question though, any bank with experience lending on storage will have established practices for determining value.

Conceptually, raising the ceiling is easy, but as a practical matter, I’m not so sure.

You can 1031 the investment portion into a new property even though you haven't held it very long because of the nature of your past and current business practices and the whole crazy pandemic scene in NYC.  

, and planning for the future.If you are financially in a strong place, I'd also encourage you to start looking at some deals to gain practice in analyzing to get ready to jump if anything juicy pops up.  

What is the best practice to pull money out of a paid-off rental, in efforts to buy another rental??

If you have consulted your attorney, and your attorney practices real estate law in your state and has reviewed your contract, then I would rely on his or her advice.

Any best practices here? 

I've read Brandon's and other books which reference in general this practice but don't get into specifics. 

You can also lengthen your minimum stay on Airbnb/VRBO and price your homes to be competitively under what your competition is charging, that's my strategy right now.As for property #2, why not list it for sale and rent simultaneously?

You can do move in inspections, do paperwork etc and learn the ropes, rules and best practices from this.