The answer to this question may indicate whether it falls under any exception to expense it in the current year.

Basically, you have to make your decision without a reliable indication of how it will affect your taxes.

It says so on our application and applicants need to indicate whether they are non-smoking or not.

You can add criteria such as home value, equity, home size to focus in on properties you would be interested in buying.The Financial Stability Indicator (FSI) can help identify people who are likely to be financially unstable.

I just did a quick google search and Baltimore County requires all rentals to have hard-wired smoke detectorshttps://www.baltimorecountymd.gov/News/PoliceNews/...In addition Baltimore REIA has an article which indicates that the city requires hard-wired smoke detectors as well:http://www.baltimorereia.com/smoke-detector-law/If you read the Baltimore REIA article carefully it lays out when battery powered detectors must be upgraded to hard-wired but of course you should not solely rely on their article.

FHA versus Fannie/Freddie is no indication of value.

Sure the city doesn't look inside the property, but what if you are in eviction court and the tenant shows photos of stuff that is not in compliance, for example a fire extinguisher that has the pressure needle in a position indicating it isn't charged?

@Hiro Kitagawa, qualified improvement property has become a bit more interesting than your CPA made it out to be.Now, there is in fact a category for owners of non-residential real property called qualified improvement property (QIP) that as of 1/1/18 replaced the old qualified improvement property (yes, same), qualified leasehold improvement, qualified retail improvement, and qualified restaurant property classification rules, as well as includes some property that would not have fallen into those buckets previously.The committee reports indicated that QIP placed in service on or after 1/1/18 would be eligible for a 15-year depreciable life as well as bonus depreciation rather than the standard 39-year, non-bonus eligible method applied to non-residential real property.However, the law was not drafted correctly, i.e., there was a technical error, and the section of the tax code describing 15-year property (Section 168(e)(3)(E)) was in fact not amended to include qualified improvement property.So for now, strictly-speaking, in 2018, qualified improvement property is regular old 39-year property that is not eligible for bonus depreciation.We do expect that a technical correction to the law will be made, but for now the IRS has actually stated that it cannot guarantee that absent legislative correction it will accept the legislatively intended change in recovery period and bonus eligibility.Anyway, this is neither here nor there since you have stated you are a landlord of residential rental property rather than non-residential real estate.And this does not affect the application of 100% bonus depreciation to both qualifying new and used property place in service after 9/27/17 and before 1/1/23 that @Yonah Weiss pointed out.

As my replies indicate I am not a fan of investors from high price areas investing in small occupancy RE in the higher cash flow locales. 

BiggerPockets' rental calculator indicates it should cashflow $7500 per month after all expenses (including HST on short-term rental income) are input, assuming 3% vacancy; 4% repairs; 5% CapEx; 8% management and assuming appreciation merely keeps pace with inflation.