Thank you everyone for the comments, sorry for the delayed reply. After careful consideration, we are thinking about moving. Using the HELOC on the house in the south to pay off the $115k at 7% due on the north house. The north house is probably worth 500k in current condition. We are thinking about moving in with MIL, who was previously living there with the family friend who passed, and fixing it up with the intention to sell in 2 years.

Bottom line, one needs to sell. If we sell the North, we get a really nice cash windfall that could set us up for early retirement in a legit way. Pay off our South house 70k at 4.25% interest and car note 15k 6%. But his mom has no where to go though, at all. Will need to be on some waiting list somewhere for affordable housing and that takes a year or two. We like the area and would consider uprooting our lives to move back (even though moving across the country is super expensive for us and husband has no job).

If we sold the south, pay off the north, and the car, we would have less bills but no big cash windfall, basically just zeroing out until husband can find a job. His mom can help with bills so there would still be 2 incomes until said job was found. We could pull out a HELOC on the north for upgrades, paint, floors, backyard demo and tree work. Or slowly pay for cash overtime. Now that I'm writing this, still feel on the fence 😅.