You can use up to $25k a year of those passive activity losses if you are actively participating in your real estate ventures ("small landlord" exception) and income stays under $100k a year.So yes it can be useful if someone happens to fall under these circumstances, but for anyone who is going to have over $100k a year of retirement / other sourced income, they may be out of luck.It's all timing - you are just using up those PAL earlier than if you waited for the rentals to start producing taxable income (they normally do if it is a good investment), or a property is sold and PAL are released to offset that income. 

Whether or not it would qualify would depend on her facts and circumstances.

Unfortunately, jurisdictions seem to be applying it by the age of the unit and not by when the unit becomes a MF.  

Unfortunately, our Austin 4-pack is facing challenges due to bank constraints and prevailing market conditions, prompting the need for member loan participation.

If you're well-capitalized and have significant reserves, but you're just looking for ways to do more deals at once, then maybe borrowing the EM can make sense in certain rare circumstances.

There has to be an efficient means of recycling this property, just as we do with plenty of other similar circumstances. 

I think TurboTax handled my confusion explained in my question, but I unfortunately can't remember exactly how.

They will want you to provide information that can't be gotten online and unfortunately, most things related to deeds/tax bills in Florida can be gotten online. 

These don't grow on trees unfortunately.

Yes unfortunately there is a lot of that at a lot of REIAs.