But if your goal is to leave your day job soon, multi family will offer more cash flow typically.

Rents are sky high in certain neighborhoods of Jersey City (we are second to NYC) as such many of the tenants are professionals with high income commuting to their jobs in NYC by ferry, 24 hour path train and bus.

For instance we have seen dozens of sand and stain jobs on hardwood at $2/sf that needed to be completely redone. 

It would be nice if you had a contact who was an actual mason not a marketer.  1930's construction is rare so maybe they cut some corners it was a global depression.  

Other risks, the contractor walking off the job, a storm hitting and delaying the project for weeks, someone breaking into the home and stealing stuff (which happened just the other day to a client of mine), a squatter, or drunk driver driving into the house (happened a lot at my old job as a firefighter lol).

We've got strong job growth (tech, healthcare, education), stable population growth, strong rental demand, and plenty of value-add opportunities in multifamily.

One marks up larger jobs, but won't say how much.

The value of the hotel is based off of how well it's being operated.My advice would be to get a job in the hotel industry.

As long as you focus on areas with strong job growth and analyze the deal carefully, I think you will be in great shape. 

I'm not sure if we can like to articles on our own websites here, so to be safe I'll just suggest the IRS web page, which does do a pretty good job of explaining the basics: https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc510The main thing to know if you're going to claim business miles is that you do need to keep a log of every business trip.