Colorado Real Estate Professional Designation for Taxes

[Adam Smith]

I have searched the forums and have found bits and pieces of answers to my question so I thought I would ask to see if I can get a complete answer.

My question is:  Is it beneficial to be designated as a "real estate professional" for tax purposes when we have one rental.  This year, which is the first full year that we have owned it will have a loss because we had to do some repairs.  Based on the below specifics can we (specifically my realtor wife) be declared as a real estate professional for tax purposes for our rental.

A little more detail on our situation.  We have W2 Income that is close to the IRS limit so we can't write off losses (or very little if any).  My wife is a realtor in Colorado (1099 employee) where she spends greater than 750 hours on real estate...not on our rental but on her real estate deals. 

Does this qualify us for the real estate professional designation so we can write off paper losses from our rental?  This year we had to do $10k in repairs (almost drained the income we made from rents received for the later part of last year) so we will have a loss when combined with depreciation and interest, etc. write offs.  I think on a normal year we will still show a profit if we don't have any repairs.

Last year I thought I remembered our CPA telling us we do not want the designation but I don't know why??

Any information would be greatly appreciated.