@Josh Deno If you are audited, you will need to show that you had the intent to hold the property for rental, investment, or use in a trade or business.

Or does it just get accepted as a matter of course, and then they audit you later if they want to? 

Communication, turnaround time, formatting, ease of audit, flexibility? 

This way everything is audited.

(make sure you audit it and give it a peer review).

We invest exclusively in the midwest and have found an audited return of 31%+ over the last 12 years.

Yep, it's all legal until the forensic audit happens.

The cost is 3k and they will back you up if you get audited.  

Apparently you can take the same write offs personally as you can in an LLC, just keep track of expenses diligently and be ready to defend them in an audit, which you should do for an LLC anyway.

Local appraisers who  are qualified are placed on a list and assignments are rotated through that list.Mortgage bankers or wholesalers who purchase loans from banks will usually have a list of qualified appraisers and the originators follow that list to sell to them.There is an "audit trail" for the method as well that the lender must be able to show, it can be by the date and time of the application with the order for services, so there is no selecting your buddy.This doesn't apply to commercial loans, but it also depends on how many qualified appraisers there are in a lending area, if you have 15 MAI qualified appraisers then rotation would be a good practice, if thee is only 1, there isn't much choice. :)