The only difference is that there might be an explainable rationale for holding on to a property, such as a well-founded belief that equity gains are coming (such as owning a house in a rapidly growing area or property where the next commercial boom is headed), whereas with gambling your odds never change regardless of your losses.

Quote from @Paul Azad: Seeing many new opportunities for us passive investor types, including "Preferred Equity funds".

For the purpose of, say, minimizing capital gain in the same year. 

Very passive and took about 6 years to have received $1m in distributions.  

All the purchase transactions i deal were investor centric and Passive income oriented.

I'm setting up our Safe Investment under the Passive Investors today. 

There are a ton of Facebook pages you can gain insight and possible renters from. 

At the early stages, the more control you have over your real estate, the better returns thus I recommend investing locally to make your dollar go that much farther and gain a good familarity with real estate before exploring out of state investing.

And if your appreciation is 4% a year, that would be a gain of another 7,600 a year. 

If you use this setup you will be turning passive rental income into active income which means you will pay higher taxes.