In this instance, an appraiser may assess the Cap Rate of the Starbucks to be 5%, while the mom-and-pop shop is assessed to have a 10% Cap Rate.

(There is also the multi-family house-hack where you buy a duplex, live in one side and rent the other, but A) those are harder to find and B) the numbers don't work as well as rent-by-the-room.)So for instance, in Denver or Colorado Springs here, house-hacking would be buying a 4-5br home.

If you are in the smokies for instance and don't have a hot tub, you will be below average.  

For instance, while it can bolster initial cash flow by reducing tax liability, it could diminish deductions in subsequent years (when the property might produce better cashflow), impacting overall tax footprint, so you need to take into account all that in the context of your short term and long term tax strategy (e.g. if you plan on selling soon, at which time the depreciation gets recovered, or not and planning to hold for a long term/forever/1031, buying more later and creating more depreciation to offset cashflow or not, etc.).The alternative is a do-it-yourself (DIY) or survey option, which costs around $400 to $500 per property (I can do my CSS report in 10min, once I have all the data needed).

In many instances like this one - by the time it gets investigated damage is already done

For instance, as an Owner/Builder, you must pull the permits, and this instantly makes YOU responsible for the satisfactory completion of said permit, and you also must know applicable codes.If one of your Subs has an employee that is not completely legit, then that falls on you as well, and you might not have even known about it.....!

There are some legal concerns in certain areas, Illinois and Philadelphia for instance requires you to have a real estate license to wholesale from my understanding.The biggest issue is that most simply don't make much money wholesaling.

The following looks at hypothetical purchases, anecdotally and in relative isolation, meaning there may be a reason (for instance to generate large tax losses for "active participation" investors to offset other income) for some individuals to undertake a particular kind of purchase.

For instance, depreciation on whatever property you are buying or something called "tax-loss harvesting" where you sell investments at a loss to offset the shares that are at a gain. 

Obviously, this isn’t true in every single instance but in my experience property managers tend to out perform agents who also manage properties.