As it's my understanding AZ is a community property state, you could treat the 50-50 husband-wife LLC as disregarded and file Sch E under Rev Proc 2002-69 instead of a 1065 to save compliance costs.Talk to your tax CPA/EA and attorney.

Being an electrician by trade can come in very hand and save a lot of money. 

Saving 24k didn’t seem worth it.  

I retired early nearly four years ago and needed to increase passive income to fill the income gap created by my paycheck's ending.

Or put in my personal retirement brokerage account?

Remember, you won't need a real estate agent to sell to the Lease Optionee (You will use an attorney & save a ton of money) so that saves you about 6% in selling costs. 

However, the realtor told me that I can only buy multifamily if I have 20% down.Looking at the current mortgage rate (close to 5%), I am indeed a little bit cautious if I decided to buy a house (SFH or MFH).My game plan now is to save up my money for the next 12 months, so that I have enough principal to put 20% down for a property while learning real estate investing concepts since I am very new to all of this.May I ask what do you all think about this strategy?

There’s a lot of debate regarding safe withdraw rates, but most reputable sources advise somewhere around 4% as a safe rate for 30 years of retirement.

My goal is to build up enough cash flow with adding additional rentals(15-20 rentals paid off) to one day being able to afford a vacation rental and renting that out until I’m at retirement age.

I suspect many landlords will appreciate a tip that can save them a trip to the bank.