STR Arbitrage and REPS

[Zachery Hitchcox]

Hello everyone, I looked around on the site and wasn't able to find an answer to my question. Apologies if its been answered before.

Does STR or MTR arbitrage qualify a person for Real Estate Professional Status (REPS)? If it can, I think that it would be a low barrier of entry and (more importantly) exit to allow the rest of my portfolio to be deducted from my W-2 income. I say this because as I'm sure everyone is aware at this point, the STR "loophole" provides some nice tax benefits and I was wondering if I can take advantage of that without dispensing capital on purchasing a STR or MTR (not sure if MTR counts toward REPS but I assume so) in whole.

Thank you all