The Austin market is still going strong and we live in a very desirable area.We *could* roll up some debt and take our mortgage to 284k.This would increase our mortgage payment by 566/month, but by reducing the monthly minimum payments with the debt disappearing we would gain an additional 1000-1100/month (after the 566 is deducted).I'm also aware that mortgage interest is something we can deduct from our annual taxes vs. other debt which we can't...This is not our forever home, but we've had so much equity in our home for so long that I can tell I'm fearful to cut into our equity, but I don't want baseless emotion to make this decision and keep us tied to something that we're not looking to stay in forever.

Good fund managers earn their keep.

I've always been more interested in building equity and earning passive income vs. flipping to sell, so I can't really speak to the other side.

Is this all of your money or will you continue to earn W2 wages?

With flood insurance it still reaches our cashflow objective but obviously reduces it. 

It's better to pay off debt with the money if you want to reduce your DTI.

@Justin Larese thank you that was my biggest question making sure if it wasn’t in a different entity that I could still separate the properties and write off the expenses because the income wouldn’t be what I was actually earning from each property.

I hold almost $300,000 in security deposits and I think we're earning around $25 interest.

Growth stocks like Amazon are going to have super high PE ratios, value stocks like utilities will have fairly low PE ratios.You buy amazon based on the stream of future potential earnings, because they are growing, you buy utilities for the cash flow of their current earnings being returned to you as dividends.All other things being equal, a higher percent in the 1% rule indicates a lower expected long term value of price appreciation. 

About a year ago I stopped putting all my money into 401Ks and Just put into savings (could have put into something to earn little interest but goal was to have safe way to build that capital), and spent that time reading and listen to podcast as much as I can.