Single Family Residential Buy and Hold (Exit?) Strategy

[Jeff Seiff]

I'm hoping to brainstorm with some experts that might be able to enlighten me on some strategies that I am not familiar with, or maybe help a light bulb go off in my head. I currently own 6 residential single family homes (2 in TX, 3 in FL, 1 in CA), and I am also invested in various syndicated LLC apartment deals. Each home has decent (not huge) equity. What are the best ways to leverage these homes for cash now, while avoiding tax. 1031 continual upgrading an tax deference until passing to my children is well understood for generational wealth, and waiting for the properties to get paid off for retirement cash flow is also great, but neither assist in leveraging equity cash which is just sitting there. Refinance is still a tough sell, kicking the can down the road, and seems you can only get limited cash having to be under 75% LTV. How about investment property HELOC strategies? Pay down and recast? Does it make sense to just outright sell if I have passive losses to offset from years of depreciation and low cash flow? Is it possible to 1031 multiple properties into one large, better cash flowing opportunities? It seems it is but it seems difficult and maybe would have been better to stick with multi-family apartments and scale up one asset, all along.....any thoughts from the pros are much appreciated....for now, I'll keep trying to focus on higher rent!