Is there a max on mortgage interest you can write off taxes?

[Sean O.]

I'd like to find out if there is a maximum amount of mortage interest that one is allowed to write off of income taxes in any given year.

I'm a newbie and here's my situation:

I'm a farily new lawyer (48 yrs old, unmarried, no kids, no property) on my second career having worked as an engineer for a major corp. for the last 20 years. I used a lot of my savings putting myself through law school finishing 5 years ago, passed the bar and have been working as a patent attorney for the last 5 years. I've paid off all my high interest (9-15%) student loans in that time and now just have a 5% loan on the remaining student loan. Payments are only $350/month so I'm paying that off slowly.

My salary is sarting to creep up to the point where income taxes are a concern as I have no write-offs at all. I've owned two properties in Orange County in the past - the first home, a fixer, was bought in 1988 and sold in 1989. The 2nd home I bought in 1990 at the peak, held it for 4 years, renting it out, then got tired of the constant negative cash flow and finally selling it for less than I paid for it.
I have some experience in real estate investing but have held off buying another property after losing $$ on my last home.

I'm now at a point where I can invest in real estate again but becuase of the steep prices in Southern California, the flat market and because I don't want to put all my eggs in 1 basket, I want to invest in one or several rental homes out of state.

My questions are - is there a maximum amount of interest and property taxes that you can write off your taxes in any one year? Is there a cap on how much you depreciation you can write off in any one year if you have several rental properties? Any other considerations or pitfalls for investing in numerous rental properties?

Thanks for any advice.