The tenant works at a live music venue/bar that I frequent, and I suspect he's earning a descent wage there.

South End again has lots of restaurants, bars, and music venues.

This unit is currently being rented as a "music studio".

Austin currently houses offices for Apple, Paypal, Electronic Arts, Google, Intel, Dell Computer, IBM, National Instruments, Xerox, Silicon Labs, Applied Materials, Rackspace, Yodle, HomeAway and many smaller start-ups.  

I have many mentors who I meet with regularly who have been instrumental in my career.

I look at it like a safety net incase one of my deals blew up on me. in these great years of late were I have paid very large amounts income tax if I had a melt down project and lost say 500 to 1 mil  ( which has happened to me in 09) I could then go backwards and recapture all the tax I paid the last 5 years.Now of course that's me were I have high exposure to risk.. if your exposure to down side is not as great then I think anything you can do to get out of AMT is good.Although I also like the uneven distributions you can do in an LLC and the general flexibility of the instrument itself

The JV is NOT a recorded instrument so the managing member of the LLC could potentially sell the duplex on you and keep the money. 

It should be a clause in the instrument that secures the loan.  

That's music to my ears. 

.- the homeowner next door not liking renters however I wouldn't want to place bad tenants eitherI don't know that this would be a strategy to propel me towards my investing goals however if the numbers are great they may be instrumental along the way.