In a 1031 exchange, if you sell a property for $2 million and purchase a replacement property for $1.5 million, the $500,000 difference is considered "boot" and is subject to capital gains tax.To fully defer capital gains taxes, the replacement property must be of equal or greater value than the relinquished property, and all proceeds from the sale must be reinvested.

On getting kicked out, you won’t know like you said but most of the time those take months and from my experience, wasn’t super frequent for the military to just boot people out.

Only variant is if you have leftover boot on a NNN purchase, you can get a one off DST to close that gap.

I was able to build a small team, but have struggled to see profitable gain in my situation.Cool to hear you actually went over and introduced yourself to boots on the ground in that market.

How have you combated this, especially considering you mentioned that you don't compete using price (understandable)2. 

You can set it up so the seller is the member of the LLC that owns the property  so that if you are going under then the buyer is booted out of the LLC and seller takes over ownership.

You will take $500K in boot from the 1031 exchange. 

I also offer boots-on-the-ground services to others who need a local team member.

Often, those advantages are boots on the ground and market knowledge, which are the two things you have/are working on.I think, in general, you will find all those central Illinois areas provide decent cash flow with low appreciation - generally speaking. 

Mainly my realtor as my boots on the ground checking the job done by the contractor, and my contractor who was doing the work.