@Saika Maeda If you pay the buyer's agent commission directly, it becomes part of your property's basis (purchase price) rather than an immediate tax-deductible expense.

I have another property I'm getting ready to close on that will be an Airbnb so it's a direction I'm going in as well!

Would have been a good title for a forum thread for people looking to do direct exchanges.

I'm on Airbnb and Vrbo, and also Houfy (direct bookings) but have stayed away from Booking .com because of the horror stories from fellow hosts.

We are looking forward to finally being able to move forward in a positive direction with cash flow and equity. 

While running a large group of small landlords in Philly, i have visibility into the full realm of challenges that new investors face - and some are quite overwhelming and totally unexpected because they jumped in without fully understanding what they jumped into. 

In addition to direct real estate, I invest fairly heavily in index funds.  

and NO, I am not part of the 99 percent of bad wholesalers who will be out of business as you implied because I have a huge network of direct buyers.

My go to for lowest hassles, taxes and  transaction costs are Lease Options or selling directly to the renters. 

Even if you don't feel you have enough info to give me directional advice, how would you go about deciding whether to address the problem?