Being consistent, taking action and working through difficulties is hard though.

Should I prioritize paying down current mortgages as fast as possible with any additional income vs. leveraging investment properties to buy an additional property vs. selling our old home to trade up (e.g., buying a vacation rental in a high-demand area)?

There is always more you can learn it seems but they great thing is you took action and have a proof of concept for yourself!

I’m ready to take actions just don’t know how to start.

I now sit down and create a detailed checklist with each action I need to take in order to get to to final result: 1.

Since these are private there are sometimes very old covenants that were recorded before HOAs were common, and so today some of them are unenforced, and possibly completely unenforceable since they've been violated for years without action being taken...that can only be known by seeing what it contains and who is protected by it.

We went through a lot of duds as we built up our vendor list but now we're about 50 strong that spans multiple trades. 

@Rich Leone I can not tell you how many people keep getting this wrong.......The current actions in place you can not send notice to evict, or to terminate lease, THAT IS IT!

The rates aren't quite as good, but you need to trade of something. 

I have been learning new things everyday over the past 2-3 years and am getting ready to take action once I secure employment (for mortgages) Thanks everyone!