@Collin S.Either have the guests clean up after themselves, or hire a cleaning company that will stop in take care of bedding and towels and such.How close do you live near the property?

I've been to 2 big name companies and they both have told me that they wouldn't be interested in taking me on as an agent unless I was willing to come on full time, which is a bummer, but understandable I guess.

However, property taxes tend to be higher (4-5%) and I'd say appreciation is even worse in what is already a market that has substantially under performed the rest of the country.I also don't have a recommendation for NWI agents yet.

I did make more, substantially, last year by about 23% from the previous year but spent more on my business due to the upcoming changes.

So lets dive in and get you up to speed on what's happening; I am currently deployed overseas until mid 2019 with a substantial amount of cash saved up and want to put that towards proper investments while I am away, so when I return home real estate investing will be my sole focus.

Two of the safe harbors that can help you deduct improvements are below:1) 2500 de minimis safe harbor.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)you need to have 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 the invoiceNote: The cost for the Unit of Property includes l additional costs (for example, delivery fees, installation services, or similar costs) if these additional costs are included on the same invoice with the property.2) Small taxpayer safe harbor: To be eligible for the safe harbor, the total amount of improvements for the property for the tax year may not exceed the lesser of $10,000 or2% of the property's unadjusted basis.If the total amount paid exceeds the safe harbor threshold, the safe harbor does not apply to any amounts spent during the tax year.

Then, if your tenant substantially damages the property beyond normal wear and tear (the one's I've dealt with were broken windows, ripping out the flooring, removing wiring from the walls, etc) it's easy to prove with timestamped pictures.

Those are some high taxes going back to 2007, with some very substantial increases year by year.

I appreciate the words of caution but I wouldn't leave my job until I have a substantial income from real estate.  

The great part of investing in real estate is there is so much data out there you should always be able to either substantiate or dis-prove that hearsay with this data.