.- My goal is to follow Scott Trench's ideas in Set for Life and hopefully rent a room for under $1200/month to save some extra cash and use it along with my current savings to buy and house hack a duplex/triplex/fourplex in 4-12 months in the Oakland/Emeryville area.- I consider myself very handy since I have renovated my entire house 99% by myself and pulled permits. 

The prices in Los Angeles are so high right now that I can't buy here, so Im thinking about buying out of state, I'm still saving and searching, and yes, Id like to lower the interest we are paying on the loan.

If you  don't make enough W2 earned income than get a part time job and hyper save for more assets.YOU CAN DO IT!!!

Instead I tend to focus on my CapEx reserves and savings.

Your "strategy" (aka common sense) of saving up capital is very smart, do whatever it takes to save as much as you can if you are serious about investing.

Plus with the new sales price I should be able to bring the assessment down as well, leading to some additional savings on taxes there.I have two possibilities for this property, the first being to get it refinanced by a bank ASAP to pay off the seller financing and bring the debt service down by about half.  

Hey,In the process of saving money for a down payment on my first rental property.

Doesn't that make more sense than hoping I save up enough of a down payment on my own in 8 years?

Hoping this admission helps someone else and saves them some cash 💸💸

I also did a 1031 exchange so I was conservative in my negotiating because the tax defferal outweighed the savings.