There are plenty of no-load funds out there (Vanguard, Schwab, Fidelity, etc) so there's literally no reason to be using your employer's plan. 

The second year we started questioning where our cash flow was and eventually discovered they had been embezzling 10s of thousands of dollars from us during the 2 years we’d owned the properties.

But I had to find a new market and it was thousands of miles away from my house. 

Concentrate on making first the hundreds of thousands in equity (owned equity, not financed property!)

Im a very busy individual but I find it logical and necessary to make time to see something I have hundreds of thousands of dollars in.

You seem to be glossing past that fact in your post and maybe you don't even realize it, but you literally emptied the bank (equity) to come up with the down payment. 2.

This is a very lucrative business with some operators owning thousands of machines.

If you could say it cost a thousand dollars per meter you might have a point, but water, gas, and electric meters are all well under $100 each!

And a lot of start-up companies are migrating to this city as well because of the OSU campus that has thousands of talented students graduating and looking for positions locally.Everything that’s going on here in Columbus is attracting investors and other businesses from all over.

Your money is literally working in two places at one time.