If yes, offsetting personal taxes as ‘benefit’ of owning real estate is not really an easy thing right?

Not including the principal reduction & tax benefits in your "flow".

We're totally on the same page that "burdens and benefits" of ownership is the key.

What benefits are you learning you have over local real estate investing?

The benefit of discussion is to get an unbiased light on it.

The benefits to the investor are obvious. 

In that scenario, I would also get depreciation benefits as the title holder.Using the syndication fund as been pretty smooth and easy, however, I'm not sure they have been raising enough capital to keep up with our growth pace so I'm looking for another alternative. 

Typically when someone highlights all the other benefits besides cash flow my spidey sense tingles.

Take a look at the study from Amsterdam. by Piet Eichholtz Eichholtz_A-long-run-house-price-index.pdf (maastrichtrealestate.com)basically a nearly 400 year study of the prices of the same homes along the best canals in Amsterdam since 1628, and the prices rose at about 2-3% or the historic rate of inflation there, same study has been retroactively and proactively studied in almost all countries on Earth and they all get same answers over long term, (Re rises with inflation rate) Now you can have short term bubbles like now in USA, but they usually deflate like the 22% drop from 1929-1935 or the 34% drop from 2006 to 2012, which many of us benefitted from.

It will familiarize you with the basic terminology and benefits.