I looked into why this is and it boils down to the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission being staffed by ex employees and board members of Indiana Power and Light, Citizens Gas and other utility providers, and over time the commission has approved numerous small rate hikes for “minimum cost of utilities.”  

Typically a DST sponsor will only distribute through an SEC-registered broker-dealer for compliance and regulatory reasons.  

The issue at hand - if you don't have release prices established up front for each property and during that 5-year period you want a partial release because you want to sell less than all of the properties - a lender will require new appraisals on all the remaining properties as there's usually an LTV max covenant plus, I think, there's a regulatory requirement for the lender (talking a traditional lender, not private, and I'm not an attorney or regulatory expert, thus the "I think").  

First, they lobbied state regulatory agencies to created standardized fill in the blanks purchase contracts, and successfully lobbied to have those agencies determine that licensed real estate agents could fill in those blanks for a buyer and not be determined to be practicing law.  

All non regulatory rules are voided in a lease.

Problem in California is labor is a killer, both from a financial and a regulatory point of view.

We are indeed living in strange times.In United States constitutional law, a regulatory taking is a situation in which a government regulation limits the uses of private property to such a degree that the regulation effectively deprives the property owners of economically reasonable use or value of their property to such an extent that it deprives them of utility or value of that property, even though the regulation does not formally divest them of title to it.

The only reason wholesalers are a "large business" is there is insane demand for deals right now, and the state regulatory agencies just can't keep up with the sheer number of new wholesalers being minted every day by these weekend seminars.   

Some places also defer licensing to the relevant industry regulatory body (etc: EPA for HVAC).

I like the numbers for Seattle but I do tend to think it's more likely to be overbought from too much money chasing too little inventory and the previously-mentioned regulatory climate is concerning.