We rented a bedroom in a house, packed our lunches every day, rarely ate out for dinner, and started a side business of wedding photography to use our skills and free time to bring in money outside of our 9-5 jobs.

And if it is not related to the market cycles then you ate in a bad project and you should try to resolve the issues or again dump the deal and take sone losses. 

That’s a really tough call, I just sold a property and ate the tax, granted it was relatively low, going through this exercise with a family member right, I’d probably lean toward’s “overpaying” for something to avoid the huge tax hit, but so much of it, is really a question of if you don’t mind managing the properties than yeah 1031 is probably best, if you hate it might be the marginal return of probably an extra 5-6k a year isn’t worth it.

Check the FTC's case page periodically.those pleadings are well written.. and basically describe the real estate training and seminar business to a tee. 

Both ate very good for networking and education.

2.Also, when we came up to stay in the location (Ocean City, Maryland) to look for houses and stayed in hotels and ate out can we deduct that as well in "travel" category?

It was great there for a bit but so many people came in and ate up the inventory, prices soared and now you would be lucky to find much where the numbers work out.

As a newbie, this basically ate up all of my reserves and was a pretty stressful time.

I finally got a better paying job and just saved every dollar I could (ate PBJs every day for years to help save) and put about 23k down on my first deal.

And surely you wouldnt like my contract which follows Maryland law to a tee.