Just keep in mind that entertainment expenses—like taking clients out for a show or a game—aren’t deductible anymore.And, yes, you can deduct 100% of your education expenses if you’re already a real estate investor.

My future game plan is looking to buy a condo with 50% down payment and pay it off within 3 years.

I'm in Boise as well and pretty new to the game. 

Then you hire a coach to accelerate your learning and take you to the next level.Using a sports analogy, it would be foolish to hire a basketball coach if your intent is to play pickup games every Saturday for fun.

Spending too much time on analyzing one deal will put you out of the game on too many other ones...

That's their whole game!

If appreciation is not there, however, it seems like a potentially long waiting game to see if your $60k investment today returns anything meaningful in the long run. 

There are rules and situations unique to each state and that is why you want to go with a local lender vice someone just reaching out to you telling you they can do it. 2) Better recourse if the lender screws something up: a local lender has more skin in the game so to speak as if they screw something up their name will be mud to local real estate agents in the deal.

So you will need to have skin in the game.

My dad and I (both with access to VA loans) are about to get into the multifam game and how we proceed is really going to depend on the true occupancy rules for the VA and our lender.