It's worth it's weight in gold and not only addresses your question directly, but gives you all the criteria you should use for selecting an out of state team (i.e. realtor, contractor, property manager, lender). 

Then they gradually get you on the hook and soon you'll be gut-rehabbing the whole place.

The benefits of depreciation, appreciation, interest write off, paydown & cash flow far out weight the 15k I would net from a sale! 

Taking into consideration where we are in this real estate cycle my main question is whether or not I come into these 5 to 7 syndications all at once at this time (as deals arise) or whether not I come and gradually sort of wanna time to get a better idea of where the market is going to go.

I have a potential partner who has more capital than me, but I want to pull my weight.

Keep in mind that the recent sale's cap rates were probably underwritten incorrectly and that those investors have a different weighting for their equity, which will distort the analysis some.

The pros seem to out weight the cons.

I want to check them all out and weight out the options.

Underlying principle for our deal analysis is that while we value cash flow to expedite saving for future deals, we are much more weighted towards 1) great deals at purchase, 2) long term appreciation potential, and 3) getting as much of our capital back after refinancing as possible to repeat.

@Will Rodriguez I'm from the Chicago Burbs, so I won't have much weight to my input, but I would caution you to actually come take a look as Chicago's neighborhoods are really block by block on what's a D/C to a B/A neighborhood in some areas.From what I can see, you don't want to just use Trulia / similiar macro statistics if you're looking at properties, because in some areas if you're literally on the wrong side of the street, you're in the 'bad' part of town.Crime in general seems to be heavily gang related and most places that I've driven through you won't have to worry, but then again I don't live in the city and the parts of town that I travel to aren't sketchy.