When I was staring out, I was broke.

- I am building a spec in Mequon and we are down to shrubs and doorbell, but it's been 9 months since we broke ground.

The tenants,3 single girls never bothered to pay the water bills billed to them and moved out.

They would have been happy if they would have at least broke even.

Whether it is loud music at night, or "Hey, our car broke down and we won't have all the money this month to pay the rent" - how you handle those situations.  

All in all I have broke even between rents and mortgage and repairs but the property has gone up about $100k in value.

Many states have a limitation on 179 that is different from the Feds.Some have really painful rules on dealing with that bonus depreciation addbacks.You still benefit from the cost segregation study without the bonus depreciation - say your cost segregation study broke out $100k of 5 year property - now instead of spreading that out over 27.5 / 39 years, you get to take it over 5 years for your local state.You still get the bonus depreciation amount on your Federal return, regardless of what the state does.

I ended up breaking even on the one house I sold and broke even on the rent I was getting on the house I kept.

Oh, and the rogue syndicator who took advantage of us all was a darling of theirs (LU's) only a year before he "broke bad", and had subscribers from some of the long-time, experienced passive investors in the group, including a mentor or two and the executive vice president, herself! 

What I failed to mention before is the tenant broke their lease early.