$800k Cash - Strategy Advice - PLEASE HELP

[Kirby Davis]

We have a farm that we built 2 years ago under contract to sell, which would net us ~$800k. This cashflows ~ $100k to us annually plus the tax benefits net us another ~ $50k in tax savings thanks to depreciation impact on my W2 income.This is not at all a passive investment, though. My husband spends a LOT of time managing it. 

We haven't been looking to sell the operation/real estate, but we were approached with an offer that we couldn't refuse. 

If the sell closes, what would be the best options for the $800k? 1031 into something else? If so, what type of investment - we obviously want to maintain strong cashflow and would want the next investment to be passive or to at least be a business investment that required oversight/management but not day-to-day grind. Curious on recommendations that net strong cashflow at this level of investment.

Or, take the cash, pay our taxes, use the rest to pay off every bit of debt we have, then use the ~$200k remaining to start investing completely passively to (hopefully) quickly replace any need for W2 employment going forward?

[Mike Roy]

@Kirby Davis - Based on the tremendous value you added to the farm in a very short period of time, would you consider buying more farmland and building more farms?  Maybe lease the finished product to other farmers so your husband doesn't have to manage day-to-day operations?  You obviously have a special skill set and valuable expertise, and I would consider running with that as far as it can take you.     

Multifamily is an entirely different game, and an over-valued, over-saturated one at that.  It's a tough time in the cycle for a newcomer, and $800k would be a lot of money to put into your first deal.  Just know that you're on a site dominated by multifamily investors, so there's going to be a bias there.  The biggest factor in determining the best use of this money is YOU - your knowledge, your network and your unfair advantage.    

Your profile indicates that you bought a $2.9MM farm with $50k down with an annual cash on cash of 200%.  I think we'd all like to hear how you did that!  If you could pull this off a few more times, you could afford to replace your husband with hired help and would have more cash flow than you'd ever need.