Having the option reference the lease by saying that the option is voided by a default in the lease defeats the purpose of separating the documents to avoid Dodd Frank and makes it easier for a tenant to claim equitable interest and force a foreclosure instead of an eviction. 

This kind of defeats the value of the TK for me.If you're looking for easy, low involvement, and high returns you're going to increase your chances of making a bad investment.

Going over all of this in my head, standing outside the diner, I started walking back to my car in defeat.

Senate amendments that would have eliminated capital gains treatment for carried interests completely were defeated.

Because now you would be back to square 1 by adding a new debt / mortgage and defeats the purpose of paying off the existing mortgage now.

And in order to deduct home office (which is not the same as renting), you must have a profitable business.Even when these home-based business ideas are implemented properly, they would not solve @Matthew Paul's problem of trying to defeat the new $10k limitation on property taxes.

You certainly don't want to blow the corporate veil as that defeats the purpose of having an LLC in the first place, nor want the IRS to look at it as a series of gifts which unnecessarily eats into your lifetime exclusion and annual exclusion. 

Maybe, just maybe, it would be self defeating to teach these uneducated onesSelf defeating!!  

Which seems to defeat your stated aim to: "get them in my name fast"?

This would defeat the purpose of the llc, that was a risk I didn’t want to take.So I go with the approach above by using good insurance, contracts and leases for the properties in my name that have financing.