We have no student debt or outstanding loans except the rentals and our personal house.

Either it's paying down debt or earning more money somewhere else.  

For houses my expenses excluding debt or cap ex run about 36% self-managed,  50% with a PM.  

The tricky part occurs when the co-op is the debtor in a mortgage note secured by the property.

Other times a cash out refinance will not be suitable is if you don't want to take on additional debt or the new payment will take you cash flow negative.It seems you have a goal of how you plan to utilize the proceeds of the refinance, so that is a good reason to do the refinance, but you will also want to look at all the other factors to make you final decision.Best of luck!

Towards paying your mortgage, paying down other debt or savings?

Meaning that they will agree to do the early work with the understanding that if you go forward with the project, they will get paid if for the spec and forward work if and when there is capital (debt or equity) to pay for the spec and forward work.Even if you can’t get either of the parties to spec the work the time and cost to do the early work is short and comparatively modest.

With that being said we aren't really sure whether our excess should be put towards our debt or if we should use that to try to find our first property.Personally, I would love to put it towards our first property because this is something that we've been talking about for 3 years now and I'm at a point that I'm tired of talking about it and ready to make it happen (hence me dropping out of med school haha) but I'm not sure if that's that best decision and I am just seeking some guidance on managing debt while still getting started (and it hopefully not taking us another 1-2 years to finally buy our first property).One thing that we've discussed is house hacking while using an FHA loan.

Even if it's just a stepping stone for one to have better control of their own personal finances in order to get out of debt or save up money for a more traditional home.

I also found 1031 to MF is extremely difficult and time-sensitive.I've calculated with ADU addition as well, if the property is added with ADU, the gross income is double; but if one do 1031 to multiple smaller home OOS, the gross income is tripled.For MF, rather than 1031, I prefer just to do MF syndication with debt or equity offering.