According to 399-ccc: “It shall be unlawful for any person or entity to distribute, sell, offer for sale, or import any solely battery operated smoke detecting alarm device powered by a replaceable, removable battery not capable of powering such device for a minimum of ten years.”

You'll need to separate your assets (either by using a Series-LLC or individual LLC with assessed distribution of assets by LLC) and you'll need to separate your passive (asset holding entities) from active operations (the property management side).After you took care of all this you can look into other more complicated/expensive strategies like you describe (equity stripping).Here is a diagram to help you on this quest - talk with @Scott Smith for professional advice on this:

@Chris MartinThat sure was a lot of words, but it doesn’t change fact that rental property investors simply do not buy an evenly distributed selection of properties across the full price spectrum and put them into service.

What, otherwise, will be the policy in relation to dividends – to what extent is it intended to distribute / retain surplus profits?

Any realtor will tell you it isn't evenly distributed; some lenders it's down in the single digits (we find ourselves invited to their birthday parties...), others it's over half. 

This was derived from talking to local PM company’s, my realtor, talking to sellers and an online expense sheet for a mutual family.  

Wow great stuff gentleman, learning so muchfrom what i understand both of these are part of the total legal balance one way or the other, is there something in the distribution of these that might cause you to think differently on a deal?

"Source of income" does not include income derived in an illegal manner."

Derive at least 50% of gross operating income from activities in an Opportunity Zone,2.

As you go you should be accruing the pref to the investor capital account and deducting distributions, so you should know how much pref has accrued at all times.