Quote from @Brian Teeter: Do your homework and be realistic about your abilities and knowledge.

While finding the perfect property can be thrilling, neglecting these foundational elements can expose you to unnecessary risks and limit your long-term potential.A thoughtful tax strategy helps you maximize deductions, structure your investments wisely, and retain more of your income.

But, many elements may be required to meet LL/Tenant laws, or were deemed "emergency" items that needed repair to prevent further damage, or were clear safety/health issues, where time is critical.

"It might be based on them having high expectations of agents and their ability to sell""What prevents an agent other than lack of integrity in setting proper expectations of a realistic price for buyers?"

Whether to self manage or not will be dependent on your finances as well as your ability and frustration tolerance for the extra work.

I won't claim to know if that is legal or not but if there are any attorneys on the bigger pockets platform, I would be very curious to hear their opinion on whether a sponsor has the ability to unilaterally erase an investors capital.

I preferred to have my tax-fighting on auto-pilot and knew it was a good thing when I got a bill for winning a case.

I am fine just going forward on trust because theses are close friends but if we can have some form of TIC agreement without risking losing the ability to 1031 upon sale, I would like to get that in place.Thanks for your input, @Bill B. and for tagging me. 

I will be selling my current home and with my gains I have the ability to purchase 2 rental properties in Sarasota, FL.

I want the control of being able to use money now while I am in great physical shape to do many activities.You have a healthy balance in your retirement account plans and they will continue to grow until you reach 59.5Investing in real estate instead of a retirement account plan gives you the ability to use money now without limits and without a fear of a penalty while you are in great shape to do more activities than you will be able to when you are in your 60's.I 100% support your decision.You may also want to look into 72T for an early withdrawal without a penalty.Best of luck