The deduction requires that you are a "trade or business."

If you ask me, even if I got stuck at the asking price, being able to walk away from renting someone else's property for $1200+/month to paying myself $500/month and then still making over 10% Cash-on-Cash annually is a pretty good trade-off and sets me up to be able to get to the next one fairly quickly.

I’m curious to hear everyone’s opinion on what trade will best lend to real estate investment.

The only way it could make sense is if you can rent a place for significantly less per month and then invest the saved money some place else with higher returns (multi family, stocks, bitcoin, ...).

You've traded 'asset protection' for limited financing options.If you don't care about getting spam e-mail the rest of your life, try lending tree or quicken/rocket mortgage maybe just to see.

So I am stuck with being limited to just any publicly traded stock, reit, bond, mutual funds, ETFs.I could just buy Berkshire Hathaway stock or something which is likely to hold up and perform well over the long term.

I thought that the trade off might be worth the risk.

@Bobert M.It appears that you have approached "jack of all trade" accountants in the past.

The "carry trade" is sexy until it destroys your balance sheet.Short term, high value add deals that you can refi would be my strategy although in most cases  I wouldn't risk my home to do it.If you can live with a permanently higher payment then do a cash out refi and keep your powder dry for the opportunity with solid yield.If I sound like I'm speaking martian right now then don't move forward!

Building 3 is a conventional loan, I earned the 25% down for it with bitcoin :-D So I'm all about doing what I can to make this happen.