After reading a few forum posts about the Seattle market and seeing a few MLS listings for multi-family homes, it seems like people are recommending to buy properties out of Seattle proper due to strict regulations for renters and price increases.I was originally looking in areas such as Ballard, Fremont, Wallingford, Greenlake because of the influx of technology employees such as myself but it seems that majority of these areas have increased prices and strict regulations.

This is a value add project, increasing the value $60-80K, primarily by getting rents up to market rent.

I recently raised my rent on a tenant by 150/mth but upon investigation I was below market by 250/mth  I realize it was a big jump for them but they had had several years below market and I was increasing it still to slightly below market. 

You could try positioning it to a bank that you're going to put that money into the property, increase the value of the property and make the loan more secure.

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.

Due to the steadily increase of inflation on my country every year i realize my future after retirement was in jeopardy so i decided to start doing something about it. 

I think you missed the golden opportunity by not emphasizing how a repaint ASAP in the beginning of March would increase the chances of a March 15th lease.

Bringing rents to market rate as leases renew and tenants turnover - in just 4 months of ownership we've been able to increase gross income by 34% (!!!).

One word of caution: value-add and forced appreciation really only apply to property 5-units+ that are valued based on the income approach. 3 unit deals generally don't benefit from this.That said, I'm sure the value of the property will indeed increase due to your improvements.

The whole point of real estate investing is leverage increasing your ROI.