If they are a dentist, chiropractor, electrician, baker, hair salon or anything that requires a building, buy and sell or lease to them. 

I find it hard to believe the IRS is interested in splitting this “hair” in a punitive way, as a new business entity starting out.

Not sure about the context here... a W-2 and 6 rentals might seem steep... but were there a bunch of hair on your rentals?

Follow the grey-haired people with life experience and real wealth instead of the flashy YouTubers making money off suckers. 

My youngest child had a heart transplant as an infant. 

My wife/business partner is kind of the MTR expert between us, and she's always saying, you don't care who your tenant is -- traveling nurse, displaced homeowner due to remodeling or home damage, remote worker, transplant wanting to figure out the city, etc. -- you care that you get a good tenant; that's all.

You can split hairs all you want whether its a "business," but what you are doing doesn't raise itself to being an active income source. 

I use excel for a lot of things, but to image having to look at a list of 200 and try to manually sift through it to find the correct criteria for a property would have me pulling out the little hair I have left.

FYI in cleveland when the city sees the owner as an out of state entity you are put right in the cross hairs and they will literally go measure the grass and fine you and make it a criminal offense. so in cuyahoga county yes i agree to use a LLC but I would do an ohio one.

I'd only heard about home hair dye that women use in the shower.Is that hair dye or shoe polish?