After a rough first year where I lost money for 8 months followed by another 4 months of learning how to self manage remotely, I had a great 13th-25th months where we have kept the placed booked, kept it profitable, and largely reinvested into the property.Here is the question though-  to buy the first property, my wife and I used a HELOC on our primary and used that for the downpayment on a new property,  for the furniture, appliances, etc, and all of the other little costs that go into getting going.  

I have to decide if im going to use a new injection of capital from the sale of my primary residence to:1) Hold in treasury bills at 4.5 percent until I find another property to purchase2) Pay off one of two existing mortgages, one at 3.75 percent and another at 4.5 percent3) Just find something to buy that beats either of those percentages on paper and be done with it4) Possibly loan out some hard money/broker it to a friend to allocateIts never an easy decision, but its a good problem to have.

When I'm investing in trust deeds - my primary concern is the safety of the principal.

MiThank you, I believe virtually all markets are over valued, but over the long term many (including my primary market) will have appreciation in excess of CPI. 

.• Primary residence: A 2-bed, 2.5-bath townhouse purchased in 2020 with a 2.75% interest rate.

This is where we will go back to your primary goal (Owning a cool property that you use sometimes vs. a pure investment property). 

If you buy primary you only exclude $750k loan interest if you itemize deductions instead of taking standard.

Your primary insurance policy with $300,000 in liability coverage should be sufficient in 99.999% of all lawsuits.5.

One would be when you have a primary home and its listed on MLS (for sale) and the bank gives you the cash out until the home sells and the loan is set up for 12 to 18 months.

But you could use the 1031 to buy the rental portion of the building and move in to another unit as your primary.