To use this "tax loophole", you need to spend at least 100 hrs AND more than anybody else.  100 hrs is 8 hrs a month -- if you have 3 or 4 rentals per month, your cleaner will spend more than that. 

The key is having reliable cleaners and handymen and boots on the ground.

It's stable, safe, wealthier and generally cleaner.

Once you do build out a solid team with cleaners, virtual assistants, etc, and automate the check-ins and check-outs, it can be lucrative at scale.  

Easier, cleaner, cheaper to take the loss fast/write it down and move on than have employees continuously tracking the file.

Keep your common areas clean and neat, possibly have a house cleaner come in twice a month for these areas if your budget allows it, have solid house rules that you enforce regarding at a minimum quiet hours, parking, smoking, pets, and visitors just for starters and be sure to run it like a business and decide if you will have month to month terms, 6 month terms or yearly terms.

We also need to communicate with our property management clients and service providers to schedule cleaners and handymen. 

Even though LLC are passthrough entities, (unless c corp) you still want to have that separation since it makes it much cleaner and easier to show expenses for the business. 

And let's not forget the ecosystem that supports this—realtors, property managers, cleaners, photographers, stagers, etc.Let's keep this conversation going.

(including contractors, cleaners, etc)2. do 100 hours of material participation and that time is more then anyone else.