What are some good end of year tax deduction strategies (outside of increasing your 401lk contributions).

However, I've personally stopped taking Section 8 tenants because they ultimately resulted in lower rent income, a higher rate of lease violations and problems, and increased costs at turnover.It also depends on your market.

Buy properties (in the path of progress) that need TLC and add value (rehab, raise rents, reduce costs, increase NOI).

Yes I believe so,As the US cycle of austerity begins to show up in the economy, we’ll see (as we do now) policies that’ll not only increase taxes but apply “taxation by other means”.

Given that real estate, in the long term, increases in value on average 4% per year, does purchasing a home make sense?

Even if it just broke even, the rent rates would increase and you would eventually have positive cash flow, plus equity.I bought a townhome for $67,000 in 2004 that rented for $425.

So rather than look for 6 properties which each provide equal cash flow and appreciation, the investor can increase the total return of his portfolio by buying 3 properties with primarily cash flow attributes and three properties with primarily capital appreciation attributed.  

I've seen people create a new LLC per property, or per $X of equity, or after $Y of income since the $800 increases once you have higher amounts of income in the LLC, or any number of other arrangements (i.e., put all your best properties in 1 LLC and worst ones in another, or conversely, only put 1 good property in each LLC with 1 bad property). 

In the meantime, we may also want to renovate our current home to increase its overall and/or rental value.The plan is to scale our real estate investment portfolio pretty aggressively after our next purchase.

Look for Value-Add OpportunitiesFocus on properties you can improve to increase rent or reduce expenses—this can make marginal deals much more profitable.3.