Please note that the risks associated with becoming a sponsor of a syndicate are numerous and as such it is always advisable to consult with your attorney and/or partner with more experienced individuals who have a proven track record of successful syndications.Benefits to the Syndication Sponsor:Leaving aside the personal satisfaction of providing a genuine, distinctive service to your investors, the financial benefits can be extremely lucrative.Some of the many financial benefits are:Brokerage Fees: if the syndicator is also a broker or is good at finding properties, there is an inherent brokerage fee (or finder’s fee) that may be earned on behalf of the investment for finding, negotiating and closing the transaction.Acquisition Fees: similar in nature to the brokerage fees, as a syndicator of real estate deals you can receive compensation for finding the property, conducting the due diligence and structuring the deal.Acquisition fees can be a flat fee ($50,000, for example) or range anywhere from 1% to 5% of the purchase price.Asset Management Fees: as a syndicator you have the fiduciary responsibility to manage the partnership.This may include overseeing the legal paperwork, accounting, negotiating property management, rehab, etc.

His entire argument (he initiated the law suit) is that I have conducted myself in a manner of 'no authorization' - I've collected $5k in the past 2 months of 5yrs and my sleeves are rolled up and I need to know if that is with cause?

Something else to clarify with the attorney who conducted the settlement when you ask how the first year property taxes were handled at settlement.

They just keep billing you and sueing you but never conduct a tax sale.There is good news even in those situations is that there is also a time limit for the government to collect the taxes.In TN here it is ten years.

Many investors build their portfolio by house hacking from one property to the next, but when doing so, they conduct their due diligence and confirm that the asset will perform as a traditional rental.

Did you conduct a title search before buying the property? 

Some landlords don’t conduct interview with their applicants.

They only check to make sure you have things like: a shredder, a locking file cabinet where the tenant/credit information is stored, a password on your computer, and a lock on the door to the office/part of the house where you conduct your tenant screening.On the other hand, if you do not want to have a site inspection, there are ways that you can still run credit checks without any involvement from the applicant.  

A large study of over 22,000 homes conducted by the Berkeley Lab, https://emp.lbl.gov/publications/selling-sun-price-premium-analysis found that purchasers are happy to pay a premium for houses that have solar PV fitted.

You might want to do some reading:How to Effectively Conduct Joint Venture Agreements as a Real Estate Investor596231-how-do-i-properly-construct-a-purchase-with-a-partnership591376-create-an-llc-for-first-partnership-best-way-to-do-so526244-taking-on-partner-s-and-limiting-our-liabilitesquestions-for-capital-partners/real-estate-partnership-questions/