If the total number of properties is more than four, you may have to amass substantial cash reserves before you will qualify for conventional financing for your fifth through tenth acquisitions.Once you have launched your acquisition plan, the income taxes tend to take care of themselves.  

Thanks for lookingTo start I personally have ten years in the construction industry, so my initial plan is to do all the rehabbing in house buy purchasing REO and flipping them with my own laborers, now obviously I would need to speak to a CPA to see how I could structure something like this, weather I keep my GC business and pay out my business as a GC or keep it all together under the flipping side of the business.After I have weathered the battle of flipping several REO and have built substantial working capitol, id like to move into the buy and hold side of the business, continuing to purchase depressed properties and flip to rent.

On one of the deals, the Seller is so motivated he is willing to offer a substantial carry back at the closing table in order to help me cover costs of financing and help buy down whomever I bring in to the deal.

How much do all of those cash flow...or at least...is it substantial cash flow or what kind of numbers are going on with all of those?

However, when I actually had the property under contract, no information changed and all of a sudden the loan points and rate jumped substantially, with no changes in any of my or thendeal info; felt like a bait and switch. 

The safe harbor applies to amounts paid during the tax year to acquire or produce what the regs call a “unit of property” (UOP), you must meet these requirements: (1) at the beginning of the tax year, the taxpayer has written accounting procedures treating as an expense for non-tax purposes amounts paid for property costing less than a specified dollar amount (which will be 2500 for you), or with an economic useful life of 12 months or less;.(2) the taxpayer treats the amount paid for the property as an expense on its books and records in accordance with its accounting procedures. ( do this on your bookkeeping software or whatever you utilize)(3) the amount paid for the UOP doesn't exceed $2,500. as substantiated by invoice.Note: The cost for the Unit of Property includes additional costs (for example, delivery fees, installation services, or similar costs) if these additional costs are included on the same invoice with the tangible property.Eg:A purchases 100 printers at $500 each for a total cost of $500,000 as indicated by the invoice.

I took too many write offs in 16 to qualify for anything this year, but with our increased income and decreased write offs in 17, our net income will be substantially more.

Not to mention having to keep checks and separate records for each property.If you're talking about a large property, either commercial or residential, that has multiple tenants and that is worth a substantial amount of money (a million dollars or more), then maybe your lawyer has a point. 

@Stephen KunenProviding substantial services to your hosts provide suggestions that you should report it as schedule C as opposed to schedule E.Substantial services include but not limited toConcierge, meals, housekeeping, cleaning, entertainment etc.A pro of reporting it on schedule C is that losses are deductible and not subject to passive activity rulesA con is that income will also be subject to self-employment taxes in addition to income taxes.

Could also say what you would've done differently.If you'd like to share any direct advice for me this is my basic situation: -I'm a 30 hour a week RN-Have about 25K cash available now-Substantial home equity available-No debt outside of our mortgage-Excellent credit-My wife and I are willing to do another owner occupied/house hack to get a MFH if advantageous-We live north of Seattle in a hot market.