I'm not aware of it ever being tested in court. 

I have contemporaneous logs of our time and believe we've met the 500 hour test in 2022.

You also want to hear how they recommend stress-testing deals and their recommended buying criteria; being pushed into a bad deal can cost you a lot of money and grief.

In this scenario, I'd do that by testing out these ideas you have before quitting your W2.

My understanding is you do not need to pass the “real estate professional test” for this.This seems like a big loophole for STR investors.

Hi Tj, when starting something new, start with a pilot program with some funds that's not gonna sink the ship even if you took a major lost and test out the water.

Now that the 5% down conventional loan program is widely available (since November last year) I generally recommend using that as opposed to FHA because FHA comes with minimum property condition standards, the self-sufficiency test, and it's less attractive to sellers.

This is done by hiring an industrial hygienist or an air quality professional to come to the property and test the air and surfaces for mold spores.

Personally, I like to run every deal through an easy back-of-the-napkin test before even pulling up an actual underwriting model. 

Find a model that you can run the exact same test numbers through that you trust has accurate measurements of IRR.