Hopefully you at least built some good industry relationships while going through this exercise.  

I would like to know which physical areas I should focus on. 

They might give them to you before to make sure that you actually perform a physical inspection so that contingency would be removed from the offer.

There are hardship withdrawal provisions and others that can be exercised if you meet the requirements. 3) If you have access to a workplace plan, like a 401k, with a Roth component, you can consider that as well. 4) If you setup your Roth with a Self-Directed IRA custodian, they can allow you to invest in assets like real estate, private lending, private equity and other alternative assets. 

And, if you don't want the best candidates for purchase but just want to exercise that authority you think you have by being the owner, that is up to you.

How have you gotten aligned with your co-buyers in the past (any exercises, tools, resources, processes, etc you've used) and how might you do things going forward?

If you don't want to physically be there, look into Showami.

You can 1031 exchange out of a dst into a physical property when the properties sell.

For the purpose of this exercise, I would like to start by separating syndications into two categories: (1) smaller capital raises that will only attract the friends and family sized checks because they require too much brain damage for those with the larger check writing capabilities;  and (2) syndications with capital raises large enough to fit within the investment parameters of true private equity/family office check writing capabilities. 

Here's how I do my due diligence:1) Portfolio matching: (takes 30 seconds per deal)a) Have an educated opinion on where I think we are in the real estate cycles (financial and physical market cycles)b) Then and only then do I pick the strategies, capital stack, and specialized asset subclasses that make sense for that opinion.