I'm not saying you should over leverage, just don't ignore everything that you give up when you eschew leverage."

I think that there is some leverage my position.

Not a heavy technology type.

Even if you purchased a $1M in properties, if you have 20% leverage you are really only trying to protect $200k or property... 

Be concerned with cash reserves and percentage of leverage you are comfortable with. 

Again, I’m probably over leveraged and don’t have nearly enough emergency funds on hand, but I was able to pick up 9 properties in five years. 

You could identify a number of properties that you purchase in cash to complete your 1031 while buying just enough with leverage to satisfy the overall reinvestment requirementsOnce this is done your 1031 is complete. 

Buy & hold to leverage BRRRR strategy to continue to grow portfolio.

If your partner is not bringing in money nor is being an active asset manager I don’t see why you would want to get him onboard but if you do need to then you already have a leverage over him and ask for 60:40 in your favor and may be agree on 50:50 as you negotiate.But if your private money source is an equity partner then typically you should get an acquisition fee from them (you may also get this fees from debt partners as the acquisition fees will be part of your acquisition costs again anything can be negotiated ) but then they would get/expect something like 70:30 or 60:40 split depending on the money they put in the deal.

Do you have any leverage within the family?