It is ordinary and necessary for real estate investors to notice wear and tear from year to year and claim "depreciation" on their properties.The rule that your accountant is referencing to is the "real estate professional status" which allows you net losses from your rental activities with your other income if your adjusted gross income is above $150,000.

Yet I keep hearing about this 50% rule that half the gross rent will be put towards expenses... is this rule really applicable to Boston?

I'm already doing this the hard way, painstakingly combing through city by city, town by town, looking at gross metrics and trying to dig in.

Just be really careful here. 7% is NOT a good rate for this deal at all, and youre going to have to generate a massive amount of gross income each month to stay solvent.

I can run a vacuum attachment over them and it cleans dust right off...if they really get gross you can pop the whole blind out of the holders and hose it off outside, lol.

Plus future rent is given to you at 75% of gross rent, as determined by Appraiser, to help meet traditional qualification guidelines.

For example if a property had gross rents of $10k/month the 50% rule would imply roughly $5k/month in expenses.

Our team handled everything else. 10% gross.  

Thirdly, I know his book was written few years ago, but his example has $2400 gross rent per month on a $100K property (which he bought for $80K). 

It's just gross getting in there to clean.