as brute as it may sound id buy another 3 family, pay, repeat. don't enjoy the stock market because its just a bunch of numbers on my screen. i like tangible assets, hands on type of guy. i could re-fi but that would take away traction and id lose 5-6k or whatever the cost is vs putting that on principle.. think of this as a wild hog on a rampage! on another note how many mortgages did you hold 10 years ago? what made you pay them off? are you all rentals vs stocks?. thanks for everyones input so far! this will be a great way for me to stick to my word.
I'm a person who prefers real estate rentals over stocks, so let's take stock investment out of this particular reply. What makes sense to the stock investors doesn't make as much sense to the real estate investors, and vice versa. There's lots of paths to success, and that doesn't mean that "it doesn't make any sense to pay off the property" if that's where your comfort zone lies. But you should crunch the numbers and the averages, to make an informed choice that works for you. I'll share how I would think about your situation:
First, you mentioned refi. What would it accomplish? You pay points/fees and (usually) prolong the debt. Your interest rate is already very low, so no need to get it lower. Since you want to buy another investment property, I think your choices are 1) Pay this loan down, then save up and get another one. or, 2) Pay the minimum amount on this loan (perhaps after the PMI ratio is paid down) and buy another asap. I'd do option 2. Put all your efforts into saving the down payment up for your next property (after the PMI thing is handled). Get that second job you mentioned, to really accelerate the process and help qualify for the next loan. Get your next property asap.
I'd do it like this because first, your triplex already has a positive cash flow and a very low interest rate, so there's no urgency (in my way of thinking), to reset any income/debt/payment balances. Then, the sooner you get your next property, which hopefully will also have a positive cash flow and low interest rate from the start, the sooner you build your wealth up. Eventually the rents will go up and the debts(interest/principal ratio) will go down, so the sooner you you get the next one sewn up, the better. Even if you never pay another penny in extra principal, the clock for your 15 year or 30 year mortgage payoff won't come any sooner if you wait to buy.
To answer your question, we had at least 7 mortgages going, maybe more. We bought one of them essentially with 100% financing, although it was painful and not by choice. Things shifted around so I'd have to go through the archives to see dates of debts and payoffs, but we still had 5 mortgages just last year. We got private loans when the banks quit loaning us money for income property. I paid them down one by one. Some with just a little extra every month, some with various chunks/windfalls, some with all the money that I earned throughout the year from my part time job, while we lived on my spouses (higher) income, and every penny from rental increases. We Mustachians all know the amazing power of focused saving, and I just shoveled the money at our debts in any amount.
Our only regret is the ones we didn't buy. There were 3 or 4, including a beach 5 plex, that we passed on for various reasons (mostly because they were priced a bit too high). Now that they've doubled or more in value, we're kicking ourselves that we balked at an extra 10K in purchase price. Penny wise, pound foolish. But we did what we could, beyond our comfort zone even, and it worked out great.
Edited to add this: I wanted to clearly point out this: Investment property calculations and payoffs should include the amount of cash flow you're getting from the rents, so it's different than paying off your non-returning personal residence. When most people talk about "paying off the mortgage" they generally mean your house. So when I pay off a $1000 a month mortgage on a rental, that increases my cash flow by $12K a year. You can do anything you want with the 12K, including invest it in the stock market.