Agreed with Saj, I'm still fairly new to REI too but from my point of view, if you're planning on staying in the bay area then you should either keep your property and take out a HELOC for the out of state investments or if you can qualify, use the 1031 exchange to swap your home for a small multifamily.This way, you can rent out a portion of it (House Hack) and pay less on your monthly mortgage payment.

I live right outside of Philadelphia PA currently, @Alan Wolkov Maybe you and I can swap information or possibly meet up sometime and talk?

And what type of financing products are you using (30 yr residential, 5 yr commercial, swap rates)?

Let's stay in touch here and as we learn more maybe we can swap good info about investing in the east bay.

You can swap rate for fees, fees for rate.

You can swap fees for rate, rate for fees, all day long.Typically most of the line-item fees you are looking at are 3rd party fees.

A new lease was never signed for the swap.4 days later, the landlord is now retracting the offer for the swap to the new home and would like my buddy to just move out of the townhouse.

I would want the tenants actual names on the lease, since if you have to evict them you will need to provide a lease with their name, and not some llc.If you have an llc rent it do they have the right to swap out tenants?

Generally - and this assumes it's a good rental to begin with - keeping what you have and building on it builds more wealth than swapping out, unless you're doing a 1031 that has a lot of value-add proposition to it. 

Many of our clients strive for the "swap til you drop" tax planning strategy.