The guidelines require the 750 hours to be spent managing and working on real estate.

You will have spent real money to get financial reports that likely show a combination of mismanagement (but likely not illegal) and general inept business decisions, which still won't get you money.I am sorry you had this experience.

Of course she won't have money to fix anything and I just spent thousands to fix the water damage from the previous tenant, who also didn't turn on the gas.

I'm European, spent most of my life in Europe and have owned property in several European countries and I can tell you categorically that it doesn't not reflect the situation in most European markets and, by the way, Chris rightfully never suggested that it does.Of course, if Americans want to reap the benefits of investing in Europe, they'd ideally need to, as you suggest, get the right market knowledge, understand the local financing and housing laws and I'd add to this the legal system.

It turns out that nothing is more of a waste of time, energy, and money than this, money that could have been spent elsewhere.

We use Yardi for our accounting, which leaves much to be desired at times, but we have spent a lot of time working on our financials to get them to look the way we want.

As a realtor who works closely with both short-term and long-term rental investors, I’d love to be a resource for you while you’re in town.Having spent my entire life here, I know the city inside and out (Indianapolis) , from neighborhoods with strong rental demand to up-and-coming areas that offer excellent long-term growth potential. 

If you have barely spent time researching and running #'s you should not buy anything.  

At that point I dont know investing would make any sense, I have heard scary stories I was thinking about short term rentals but that needs constant cleaning after guests and conpetition is very high my friend spent almost 200k out of pockets to buy a property for airbnb and he got 17 bookings per year....

@Tyler Jahnke won't tell us how much how much was spent on rehab.