At a high level, it appears that you just need higher yielding assets to which you can perform like-kind exchanges.

Your issues with your GC not performing as desired could potentially be smoother by implementing contracts/agreements that are signed and professional.

After some years of reading about real estate, I started to develop some general guidelines to follow when it comes to correctly measuring performance in real estate, especially since I wanted to compare performances of other investments such as stocks, bonds, etc. 

I’d find their listing on Airbnb and see how it’s performing.

Unless you have specific items in your lease that they need to perform there is nothing you can do about how they keep their home. 

If you were to perform a cost segregation study, you could depreciate the assets included in the purchase that have shorter useful lives much more quickly which helps increase your cash flow of the property.

@Yoselin Pearce I'd encourage you to look into school zones, and target high performing school zones!

if so, its a winner...even if not, the one that is performing better covers the difference....you could always trade it, but what would it be worth in 25-years?

The portfolio was performing with all the tenants but one paying rent, which alleviated risk.

The equity you take out is the cash portion of the 50/50 equation, we want it liquid so we could front run a deflationary cycle but we want it performing to maximize returns.