He contacted his management company, and they came back and said it would be a "huge mistake" and it would be better to do it during the week when the tenants are gone.

:)If you don't mind my asking, what problems/mistakes did you run into with the out-of-state, site-unseen approach?

The cracking can be from a mistake in construction, ground/water problems or a local tree.Cracking is not good mostly because few are qualified to understand what it means.

All the advice I get seems to point to the theory - start small, make mistakes, learn your lessons, and move up gradually.

But they know how to do it and their mistakes are their own if they screw up.

This is one of reasons, due to my early mistake (2003) of buying a $360k home in a 5-4-7 school zone where the average home value is $180k, I now only buy in the 10/10/10 school zones in A neighborhoods where I know that my assets will double in value in 10 years.

It may only take a few hours/month, but even if you find a perfectly honest property management company, no one is perfect and mistakes need to be caught & corrected.

Selling before then is a $50,000 mistake?

It would be unusual for a DST broker to make a mistake like this. 

A couple of mistakes during a rehab can cost twice as much to undo.