I ended up gaining a mentor and eventual business partner on the deal along with making a $10K finders fee on the deal.

The property required getting a trust certificate made by the trustee, paying cash for the properties prior to the tax sale and now were are working on obtaining a forced easement to gain access to the main road.

Building a team you trust, or using a turnkey provider is a good way to get your feet in the door and gain some experience.

Was it reasonably achievable to gain forced appreciation on a house that needed some TLC in this expensive market?

After 2years I’m now ready to sell and expect $70k gain.

You can definitely sell and lock in your gains.

I'm contemplating rolling several very large SFR property gain amounts (via 1031) into a handful of DST Vehicles.

You could contribute enough to get the match, let's say 4% from you and your employer (8% total contributions), but your 401k loses 6% one year, resulting in growth of only 2%.During a good year, maybe it grows by 16% (=8% investment gain on your 4% contribution and 4% match).Alternatively, you could keep the entire 401k account in cash (not invested in any securities) and let it grow at the matching rate, guaranteed like a CD.If you forecast out to retirement, based on what you plan to contribute, do you anticipate that your 401k will be your primary source of retirement income? 

Rates have gone down since my mortgage so I'm currently refinancing my house and I save $100 a month on payment (it will take 4.5 years to see the benefit) which I plan to apply to my HELOC.Ideally, I would like to downsize considerably and buy another primary home and rent out my current house to which I think I could gain a +$200 cashflow to also go towards my HELOC. 

It includes all major assets & liabs, inc some pers prop that has value (or is individually insured) & I would consider selling to fund new found opportunities or if there was a major emergency requiring a change in budgeting/liquidity.My PBS is currently three pages long, broken into sections w/ sub totals to assist in analysis:AssetsReal Prop (Assessed, Purchase/Rent data, 2-3 free online providers like Redfin, then averaged.)Personal Property (Cars, Art, Hard Assets, things not in an account or "foggy" daily market value)Cash Accounts (ie funds w/ access not limited by age, Banks, Brokerages, CVLI, prepaid taxes,large pending incomes like insurance settlements & reimbursements owed to me.)MineSpouseCo-AccountsRetirement Accounts (or anything where access to the value is age restricted)MineSpouseBusiness 1 (Net number carried over from separate business records)Business 2 (List as needed)Liabilities (Would section these out too if I had enough to justify it)Listed in order of assets above if tied to such, mortgages, HELOC, etc.General liabilities listed next, largest to smallest.Net Worth CalculationThen I include several lines of totals; subtotal of amount available for conversion to REI, ratios & simple measures like mo / mo & trailing 12 mo avg % & $ return.My FI goal is over the long term to average at least 1% mo / mo gain in net worth.I have found this to be best for me for several reasons:I have a hard time visualizing a set $ amount as a goal because my amount required to retire would then seem too big to tackle.