This essentially doubles the time to get a property back for a lease violation.

From my understanding an LLC would essentially create a corporate veil and restrict my taxation to up to 35%.

I've made a decent living over my brief investing career in Austin, but I've warned many out of state investors to the same thing that @Jay Hinrichs mentioned, which is that we have no state income tax here, which means that our property taxes are astronomical to make up for it.If you live here, it's immaterial, but if you live in a state with income tax, you're essentially getting taxed twice (and yes, I'm aware of (some) of the complexities of cross-state earnings and how they're taxed).

Having the right broker support that aligns with what you are trying to achieve is essential.

At the moment, I am essentially writing out a business plan detailing the entire process so as to make the process as smooth as possible. 

They're essentially contributing the duplex to the partnership 

I definitely see both sides of the argument but from a pure safety of investment standpoint, the sooner you can pay off the property, the sooner you don't have to worry about some kind of significant downturn in the market that could crush your cash flow potential. 

In the future if I keep adding to that portfolio of properties I could essentially use the equity in there to lend against. 

If its structural or a life safety issue then you need to take care of this.  

IRC § 1031 even addresses properties held for fewer than two years (only the periods during which the property was held are taken into account, unless it looks as though an individual is deliberately trying to “avoid the purpose” behind the code).The safe harbor, essentially, is something like that IF…1.