One of the most common reasons is the lower cost of living.

Aren’t DST’s essentially syndication deals, but with much lower returns (though they do accommodate 1031 exchanges)?  

New Britain is where you are going to get the best ROI like you mentioned and this is because as a whole there are more areas within the city where qualified tenants are looking to live and the purchase prices are lower while still maintaining competitive rents.

She's not going to have any leg to stand on in court if you get that far unless there's some explicit language prohibiting the owner from assigning responsibilities to another legally authorized party, and I'm guessing there isn't if another PM company was maintaining the lease and provisions - and the fact that the tenant was voluntarily working with the other PM confirms the acceptance of an authorized agent even if it's not explicitly stated, the same way if you accept rent from a tenant after a lease expires you imply acceptance of the lease terms continuing (which is why you should always have a holdover provision). 

When it comes to managing your mortgage, most homeowners are familiar with refinancing as a way to lower monthly payments or take advantage of better interest rates.

When you say "section 8" tenants, are you looking at low-income housing tax credit type properties, or standard rentals that are in lower income areas and therefore cater to HCV tenants?  

It would be a good idea to assess your tolerance to risk and then plan something like that, but using a heloc is going to be around 9-11% in this market so to pay something off with lower interest rate to borrow more might not make much sense.

If you are willing to entertain areas outside Gainesville, you should look into areas like South Fulton, Forest Park ( lots of lower priced inventory) Jonesboro, and College Park to name a few.

Or we gradually perform high-quality updates for a live-in flip, then roll the equity into a new home.Regarding rental income, we aim to boost income, lower our effective tax rate by generating more low tax-drag income with rental income (since there’s not much we can do to lower out W2 tax bills) and have retirement cash flow.To compare the financial impact over 10-20 years, we want to analyze renting versus flipping.

You could potentially negotiate this by structuring it in a way that aligns with the seller's need for a quick settlement, without lowering the cash they’d receive.