@Paul Rumolo KCMO is too blown up for you to get optimal cash flow out of now. 

If you meet optimal thresholds for the above criteria, you could look at rates around 7-8%.

The best way to find them is to send out mailers.Some good lists to target are Absentee Owners with Equity, Seniors with Long-time Ownership and Homeowners with Low Financial Stability Scores.You can work with a list broker to optimize your list for your area.

How do you guys optimize your operations?

That's only fair if they believe how you want it done is not optimal.

You can only control eviction as a cause of the turnover this way; the choices a tenant might make (job change, getting married or divorced, having kids and needing more space, etc) are still beyond your control and some of those choices will give you turnover.These circumstances don't make careful screening any less valid a way to optimize profitibilty whether it be due to turnover, property damage, time spent collecting late rent, etc. there is no point in investing a bunch of cash or leverage to maximize rents if you are not adhering to landlording 101.

Learn to pick the right tenant & begin identifying NOI optimization strategies 5.

DST's are not optimal for a syndicator to do versus a straight sponsorship where investors are putting non-1031 cash in.For 1031 clients on the commercial end I help them buy directly and make a commission on the sale.  

But it seems fairly evident that the best idea to optimize rate of return (I have yet to crunch numbers on this) is to sell when the market is clearly overvalued and then buy in cheaper neighborhoods when the market is low to capture that appreciation as well as high rents in Oakland in general. 

No - we are not interested in buying our current house ... while the home is lovely for us now ... the location isn't optimal.