To answer your questions here though:Alternative options - I was going to sell all my stocks and etfs, take out a HELOC, and some credit cards to try to shoestring together enough to the deal without a hard money loan. 

the midwest has lower price points than other areas of the US, sure, but it also comes with its own challenges - for example, very old housing stock, lots of deferred maintenance, and tremendous demand for the best properties."

I am now at a point in life where I realized retirement isn’t far off and I need to find something outside of stock markets and 401k’s to invest in.

Be rid of the toilets, trash, liability and management headaches.5) Liquidity and Diversification: Diversify your capital into multiple real estate markets, REITS, stocks, bonds, multiple funds.

No tax so far I think.2) If I convert that partnership interest into shares in a PUBLICLY traded UPREIT I trigger tax on the deemed sale/exchange of the partnership interest into stock of the REIT?

Two other things to note about #401kloans:Possible benefit if the stock market turns south, the money outstanding against your 401k loan is no longer invested into the market! 

Properties are not like stocks where After IPO the market cap is so large that that most of the life changing appreciation is gone. 

Real estate is not the stock market and it's called buy & hold and not buy & sell for a reason.I did sell a few properties about 10 years ago when I learned the hard way that going into cheaper neighborhoods was not the right strategy for me, so that was basically a strategy correction and it was necessary, but also costly both in terms of dollars and time.

A global trade war is seen as the biggest observable risk for 2025, followed by a tech stock plunge and concerns over inflation and bond yields14.

Interestingly I saw they’re still in existence with a stock price of $3,105 per share.