I am wondering if I can claim it as a repair(counting against rental income) or if it must be claimed as an asset (with depreciation benefits)?  

Wife and I are both self-employed so acquiring a traditional mortgage is challenging based on our "on paper" income.

Top producing real estate agents in many market make over a million a year with a whole heck of a lot of them making 200 to 500k.. the other 60 % of agents will not make much but it could be a secondary job and they are not the primary income producer in the family.. 

They don't mention anything about paying payroll taxes, workers comp, complying with laws, etcReal estate agents can have a team around them where they do have employees if they have admin/support or marketing team.Regardless, if you want to interchange small business for commissioned sales people in my post you can.My post was mentioning that service providers in the real estate space are incentivized by their advertisements as it will increase their annual income.

Verifying last 2 years of rental history and income extremely important to find the “best of the worst”.Make sure you understand the Class of properties you are looking at and the corresponding results to expect.The City of Detroit has 183 Neighborhoods we’ve analyzed.DM us if you’d like to discuss this logical approach in greater detail!

This way, you can offset other income and potentially reduce your tax liability.I recommend discussing your options with a tax professional who can provide personalized advice based on your overall financial picture.

.- PM is contractually obligated to perform annual maintenance/inspection to keep property in top shape. - PM provides a cash based accounting report every month, for every unit under management, that clearly labels all rent, all expenses, including management fees, and the net directly ties to the amount of money deposited into my bank account.- PM is a licensed handyman, or has them on staff, and takes care of most unit turn work at a reasonable rate. - PM has no breakup/termination fee- PM does not take project management fees, except on large or complicated CapEx projects exceeding $5,000. 

As there are Californians still moving here, the vast majority are instead picking the states with low or no state income tax like Texas, Florida, or Tennessee.Although we still have a positive influx of people moving here, more people have been leaving due to rising housing costs in recent years.To put it in perspective, we saw around +45k in the 2010's.Overall, CO is basically a balanced net migration in recent years which is likely to keep home prices steady....

Our plan is to use the "Sneaky tactic" and for the next few years, the plan is to buy a house that needs a little TLC, fix it up as we live in it and move on to buy another house until were tired of doing it or reach a decent income.

The IRS has a guide on rental income and deductions that might help: IRS Rental Property Tax Guide.2.