Real Estate Professional Tax Status ?'s

[Brady Hanna]

Hi all, I appreciate your help in advance on this extremely complicated topic.

My wife and I are trying to find out what exact details will count towards the 750 hours of "materially participating" in real estate tasks.

Here is our situation: I have a full time job and my wife is a stay at home mom/manages our rental portfolio. We currently have 3 rental properties (2 bought in 2013, planning on buying 3+ per year). We also have a property manager that manages the properties.

My questions are regarding what activities count towards the 750 hours:

-Does looking for new properties count? (Scouring Zillow for example)

-Does reading books on real estate count?

-Does going to REI club meetings count?

-would listening to real estate podcasts count?

-How about scheduling and working with a contractor to rehab the property prior to it being rented?

-Drive time to and from the rentals (25 minutes away)

-What about preparing our books in Quickbooks?

-Time spent at closings/working on prepping loan paperwork, etc?

-Any other things that I missed that would be good to count towards our hours?

Sorry for all the questions, but I have scoured the web and can't find a thing and the IRS guidelines are about as vague as possible.

Thanks for your help!