I won't just write them all here but I highly recommend contacting a qualified 1031 intermediary to walk you through the process.

Any specific neighborhoods you recommend looking into—or areas to avoid?

Regardless, you might find the copy & paste info below helpful:)--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Recommend you first figure out the property Class you want to invest in, THEN figure out the corresponding location to invest in.Property Class will typically dictate the Class of tenant you get, which greatly IMPACTS rental income stability and property maintenance/damage by tenants.If you apply Class A assumptions to a Class B or C purchase, your expectations won’t be met and it may be a financial disaster.If you buy/renovate a property in Class D area to Class A standards, what quality of tenant will you get?

I would only recommend moving on this if you are comfortable owning it for the long term.

I also recommend that you attend some local real estate investment meetup groups.

The mega backdoor roth sounds great in practice, but in real life situations I've never actually recommended it to anyone. 

I would recommend that you don't ignore it; repair the drywall, monitor it and see if the drywall cracks in the same locations again.

There is an incredible amount of points to consider when weighing the options on something like this and honestly, I don't recommend it to very many people at all ....even seasoned tradesmen and investors.

Ok, I wasn't spamming (I don't even sell anything I could spam) but I was pasting a "hi" message to new members THE SITE RECOMMENDED TO ME.

If approaching the seller directly, how do you recommend I go about it?