Here's a breakdown to my best knowledge  Real Estate Investment Trusts are companies that own, operate, or finance income-producing real estate.

Leverage in an IRA will produce Unrelated Debt Financed Income (UDFI), subject to Unrelated Business Income Tax (UBIT).There are plenty of investment options to deploy your IRA funds, but again, using your IRA in connection with this transaction will disqualify your IRA. 

On my end, I would never purchase a property that won't produce at lease 1k in net cash flow, and it must be in a desirable area that is expected to appreciate.

I can only produce about 2  houses a month and out of 90 so far I have only had to hold 5 or so past C of O they all got sold either pre sale or right before we finished..

For me, a "Good" Sponsor looks something like this: - Fees more or less result in a solid full-time salary for sponsor, not millions in upfront compensation:  Fees are structured such that the sponsor earns a good living while managing your money, but does not make a killing until your money is returned.

The last house I sold was last year before the ruling.You are not allowed to mention compemsation of a Buyer Agent anywhere in the listing (according to the warnings) and to do so owill result in fines imposed by the MLS.

Random actions have random results. 

IF you were to renovate a non-conforming unit, that unit would now need to be brought up to code.When or if you rent out the unit, you, of course, run the risk of the tenant calling the city and saying the property isn't up to code, which would, in turn, cause an inspection by the city and likely result in some violations that would require you to bring the unit up to code.These types of units are ALL OVER the city of Chicago and be rented out on a daily basis, but there is still clear risk associated with renting them out.

Once I had a few in mind and was working with a realtor that understood my target market, we could narrow down my search results. 

In my area, I told the inspector I understood how busy he is and provided him with pictures of the work being done and the final result.