Depending on your personal life and your other properties, during the 5 year period you could live in 3 of your properties working towards this tax reduction.

If recent history shows anything it's that if you invest in them enough times, you'll lose your money or have a 5 year period where you can't access your money and aren't paid anything while waiting for it.

If a 6 to 7 figure income is realistic in a relatively short period of time, and I could really do it with 10 hours of work a week from anywhere with internet, than it would be a great investment.

Now onto the concerns.Concern 1 - It has been on the market for 4 months and the ask price lowered from $180k down to $90k over that period.  

Both will likely require you to refi again in 5 to 10 years and rates could be higher than you can afford so I'd only recommend them if you're planning to sell the home before the rate period ends.

But one we rehabbed/flipped for +$80k net, and the other is a fantastic town home site overlooking downtown that I'll either develop myself or flip to a builder for $40k or so net (we've currently got the existing structure rented to be cash flow positive and bide us some time during the redemption period to decide).

And now some thoughts...When they say You Can't, what they really mean is They Can't - period!

Just make sure your offer contract allows you an inspection period with the option to back out if your inspection comes back with any big ticket expenses that turn it into a bad deal.  

Period, So, they weren't making a judgment about the viability of my particular deal.As to the "break-even/lose" issue - well, I've learned so much while working on this house.

It might give us an idea.I find renting for September 1 to be the busiest rental period of the year.