.- A PMC is not going to go to the extremes owners do as a PMC can only afford to spend X amount of time on problems for owners - or go out of business.

I haven't pulled the trigger yet - still looking at different paths. 

Obviously it is a very different experience than walking the property in person so any advice would be extremely helpful and appreciated.

Without much experience, I'd advise extreme caution.

I've always found this aspect of working with the city on development projects to be extremely confusing.

Here’s an extreme example to illustrate - if you 100% leverage a purchase for $300k and it’s worth $100k and you’re cash flowing $5/mo, your COC return is infinite.

So this really isn't a 1031 question so much of a trigger of deemed sale question.  

@Li Kia   Some people are just extremely hard on property.   

I am extremely interested in all things real estate but do not know how I want to pursue it after I graduate this year.

However this last tenant left our unit in a very damaged and extremely filthy state that took considerable work to remedy (which was a surprise because they had been pretty responsible until this event).