But again, it's at least hundreds of millions there protecting, maybe billions, nobody really knows, because nobody's untangled the weave as of yet.

Real estate, by default, is passive and the primary way to avoid the passive loss rules is to qualify as a real estate professional.Full-time employees and non-real estate business owners cannot qualify as a real estate professional (aka REPS status) because one of the tests is to spend more time in real estate than anything else (and it’s unlikely that you can convince the IRS or Tax Court that you spent more time in RE than your day job).

It is much more efficient to spend some time up front to really understand the market.

Using your own funds to pay down your loan so you get a bigger loan sounds like a zero sum gain (aka IE using 1 dollar to pay down loan so you can net 1 more dollar from the new proposed loan) So how are you going to net more cash when spending 1 dollar to get another 1 dollar ?

I spend half the year in Indonesia where me and my wife rent a home.  

If I had $10 for marketing, I would spend $9 on the lead list and $1 on some tool to do something with those leads.   

The idea is by spending big on amenities, you'll outperform other properties. 

*In addition to the $7,000 weekly salary that she drew from ORES, Van Gundymisappropriated more than $5.7 million in investor funds for her own personal use, spending thosefunds on a variety of purposes, including payments for her nanny, private school tuition for herchildren, veterinarian bills and boarding costs for horses, cash withdrawals, auto payments, retailstores, and debt extinguishment, among other personal expenses*

I don't spend a lot of energy on worrying about that.

Can find stuff down in Macon that is 1% but you will spend sooooooo much money on repairs and chasing rent it won't be worth it.