Efficient Vehicles For Paper Passive Losses

[Bryan Hancock]

We need about $4.5M in improvements to offset some passive paper gains in tax year 2015 assuming at 30-year, straight line depreciation.  The income from this sliver is about $150k or so.  

I was originally thinking of buying some more rentals or small apartment buildings, but there are bound to be other more efficient investments for capturing some good paper losses while also getting some decent yield on the investment.   Some folks mentioned car washes, but I don't know the first thing about running one and would be worried about managing it.  I'm sure a chattel appraisal or some such may accelerate some paper losses on the right assets.  

Any ideas here?  What would you look for to gather paper losses and a nice risk-adjusted yield?  Ideally we can control the assets selected, but this isn't really necessary if it makes sense to invest passively with good operators in good projects.