You wouldn't be in a terrible position because you're still getting a portion of the mortgage covered, but the numbers aren't superb.

Require maintaining the lawn / plants in lease agreement.Pay portion of water billDrought tolerant grass

No need to make it more complicated. just live off the 18K per month and save your cash flow and keep buying properties cash. and when you want a big payout when you're close to 70 sell off a portion of a properties as needed.

@Christina Wrightsman - I think your response is really well written but I might leave off the no showing portion.  

As I mentioned before, my partner tried to "sell" me on the fact that the $30k in extra labor really only cost $20k because 1/3 was his portion of the profit.

I want to minimize the taxes and also use the best tools to quickly get the fix portion done.Thanks for the help and glad to be here. 

However, parents still own 2% of property so I cannot sell it or refinance my portion against it as far as I'm aware (and I'm not risk loving enough to want to do that anyway).

I'm not too familiar with the insurance portion, but I think they can assess the liability potential and then cap your expenses and insure any gap, but then you pay for not really all that much protection.

Actually, in residential home adding a carport etc it is adjusted a portion of total cost.

HELOCs also tend to have a draw period, where you can borrow and payback as frequently as you want to your limit, then move into a pay back period.Some banks offer HELOC that are interest only payments during the draw period, and some have interest plus some pay down on principal.Then there are other banks that let you fix a rate and payment for a portion of what you have drawn.