Groves is a good solid rental area and is rising with the tide of that larger surrounding cities.

If so, you open yourself up to a larger pool of candidates.

Also getting to your point about looking for brokers that has no desk fees, all of the larger national brokers will have desk fees to some degree, the only brokers I know of that might not charge a monthly fee is some smaller local ones.

I'm at the point where I'm going to start borrowing larger amounts.

Unless you’re slumlording it, or in larger MF properties, the hassle of managing multiple LLCs is usually not worth the risk protection.

The association fees are often a larger % of the property value and rent with condos - which might reduce your future appreciation potential.

Otherwise I would need to look and hour or two out, and living an hour away from work seems like a waste of time and energy. however, I’m moving there from California so I haven’t had the chance to look myself yet, drive around, etc.

If so, you open yourself up to a larger pool of candidates.

People think they are going to save money by doing the eviction themselves, but it ends up costing them much more in lost rents and psychic energy than an attorney ever would. 

From the 1031 perspective though there is one other possibility that may not naturally occur to you.If you can combine those sales in a compressed time frame it would be possible to combine them (the time frames have to overlap) into one or more larger assets.