Hundreds die every year from it.Yet we keep getting into these metal caskets day after day, year after year.

Just keep that in mind as you choose your best exit strategy.

Keep in mind in TX you likely won't be able to get title insurance for 2-3 years on a tax sale property, so not a good idea to spend money until then.

Keeping the properties separate is mostly for the different depreciable lives and it wouldn't matter a whole lot when you eventually go to sell the property.

I don't want to interrupt my cash flow and I don't want to keep dealing with the damage.

We ultimately decided to keep the other property and slowly renovate.

The income is the same, the difference is how hard you work to achieve it.Parting thought, I also purposefully lag the top of the rental market in my personal portfolio...if a property I have owned for 4 years was rented at $900 and has a good resident then even though the value of that property may be $1250 I am still going to put this specific resident at $1050 so both the resident and my portfolio are winners each year and we have incentive to keep it that way.

Indeed that is true, the idea is that you keep buying property and stack deprecation 

You can go through the renovation process and keep the rental.

My primary focus is Knoxville, Tennessee, but I'm also keeping an eye on Conway-Myrtle Beach, SC and South Florida.