During this same time period my wife and I both quit our jobs and started a dog-walking company.

Larger companies charge more for smaller property classes. 

You are getting the the bad financing of larger properties, say 12-20 units and the hard to find good management of 2-4 units.) so I’d concentrate on 2-4 units if you can’t/don’t want to look at 8 or 12+ buildings. 2) That being said, even though 12 out of my 13 properties are in Vegas, they are all SFR.

Essentially, you can go prospecting before committing to a larger purchase once you've hit pay dirt.4.

Are you looking to build a larger portfolio and capitalize on velocity of return, or buy a couple solid properties that really pay off in the long run?

Either option is good but they both have pros/consNEW BUILD - You'll have all those warranties, 1 year, 2 year, 10 yearEXISTING HOME - You might have more freedom for what you can do with the house, no HOA & larger backyardA lot of new builds are offering interest rate buy downs that are lower than the regular market right now.  

I am guessing that with the online sales, the prices will definitely increase as there will be a larger participation

We would like to sell them and use a 1031 exchange to purchase a larger tract of land that we expect to close on before the end of the year.   

Of course the bolder the target, the less likely it is and probably less than .01% of people could pull this off.More realistic advice is to get as high of paying W-2 job as you can, save up, put 5% down on a 2-4 unit, manage the heck out of it, and then leverage that experience to do a larger deal using OPM.

Select a larger area that is at least 30 minutes in each direction. with maybe a hand full of exceptions I am pretty sure you would be hard pressed to find a mix that represents the demographic cross section of this country and therefor a wide range of neighborhoods.