I’m close enough to retirement age that I could make this my primary occupation within a few years and, with a little luck, invest on my own - but I like the idea of also investing other people’s money as a way to help grow their capital alongside my own.I’m fairly early on in my research but I am stuck on what seems a straight-forward tax problem.

Diversify - Grow your portfolio selling with the 1031 and buying multiple replacements and by doing it that way tap into 100% of your equity instead of the limits in a refi. 

It might benefit you to engage someone that understands real estate investing to be able to take advantage of these discounts, as well as use them to double check your work until to you grow to a point where it makes sense to outsource.

My name is Joshua, and I am a newly licensed REALTOR in Central Texas (Austin, Round Rock, Cedar Park, and all the other nearby places that are growing like crazy). 

You should look into Series-LLC and see if that's an option for you - then you don't need to worry about this question, as you can place a property in its own children Series-LLC that you can form when needed.As for distribution, you can have one or more per LLC, and that depends on multiple factors:- property class - you might not want to mix A class property with a D class property in the same LLC, due to different tenant level- cash flow - you might want to keep your cash flow cow separate from the ones that barely produce- equity - you might want to keep the one with large equity in its own LLC while you can group the ones with little equity in another LLC (let's say you have one with 50K equity in its own LLC and 3 other each with only 10K in another LLC, till their equity grows to your risk threshold when you move them out in their own LLC).- number of units (in the case of MF)- location of real estateThe investor has to decide what mix is optimal for their situation.

I can't remember ever having a landlord or manager risk any liability to inform me of a problematic tenant.Has anyone else actually had a past listed landlord reference give them negative feedback that helped them avoid a bad tenant?

That's also what I did............Plenty of resources here on BP about how to buy out of state so check those out.From a motivational stand point....you can always say ....My market doesn't have this......My Area doesn't have this.....just remember, "Whether you think you can, or you think you can't, you're right."

I looked at a couple of houses in Honolulu that were basically tear downs and if I remember correctly, they were in the $1 million range.

@Rico Saldana,I'm not sure I fully understand your scenario... but you must remember that your spouse is considered to be disqualified person to your IRA.

We also have a growing population of educated professional tenants that will target SFHs and absent landlords.