With you having taken the program, do you think the courses were built based on someone who already have knowledge in real estate or someone like me whose only knowledge in CRE are based on Forums, Youtube, free crash courses on financial modeling, and internet searches. 

To qualify, you generally need to spend more than 750 hours per year on real property trades or businesses in which you materially participate.

You can qualify for this by:Having tenants for 7 days or less at a time.Materially participate, typically with the test: You participated in the activity for more than 100 hours during the tax year, and you participated at least as much as any other individual (including individuals who didn’t own any interest in the activity) for the year.If you materially participate, you can offset your non-passive income even if you have W-2 income.

section=535.300Below is excerpt from the internet on my state laws:#4 How must Missouri landlords store their tenants' deposits?

If someone killed the internet tomorrow, and all brokerages had to go back to the Yellow Pages and mailers, I bet the industry cost would go down MINIMUM 30% just from that 1 action.

For example, things like tools or building materials that I buy specifically for repairs on these units.

Paint correction and detailing take hours of labor, materials, and a dust free environment.

It also regularly puts out deals at low 65% or less LTV, and high 10%+ skin in the game/co-investment etc.They market under 506B so are prohibited from posting publicly on the Internet and instead function by referrals.

Tax benefits can help make a better business deal, but a bad business deal is hardly ever going to break even just because of tax benefits.The other big consideration you should have, in order to actually benefit from real estate fueled losses or credits, it will require a substantial investment of time - either to get over the material participation thresholds for short term rentals, or to get over the real estate professional thresholds for mid term /  traditional rentals. 

The only upgrade I made to the condo while there was a fresh paint job that was done by my generous brother-in-law FOR FREE (minus materials) and the epoxy I handled myself in the garage.