You have one set of books, one tax return that flows through to members or as a corporation, one bank account for operations, no allocations of expenses to various LLCs, lower time required for maintaing the llc books, meetings I could go on and on....If any attorney suggests such a strategy, I'd say they are likely milking you into future leagal assistance, and an accountant for additional accounting time.

I am sure the agent has a bunch of business expenses that have to be deducted from that.Cost of living in California is high as well compared to other states.It all comes down to does a broker/agent want to allocate their time to accept a certain book of business??

There're various methods to figure out the percentage, none of them is exact, obviously.Most items will be allocated 60/40.

Some of the fees you listed above are inaccurate, and as you already know, some are allocated towards the buyer or seller only.

@Matthew AlexanderYou should allocate the expenses over the period that it was considered a rental property.One other thing to consider is that you may want to consider selling the house within the next 3 years(2 years from now) to get the benefit of excluding up-to 250,000(or $500,000 if Married filing jointly) of gain.

Lastly we would like any advice on how best to allocate our 80k total real estate cash budget, or confirmation that what we found (one full renovated single family for us, and a duplex with one unit move in ready) is a good idea.

I would make sure you have that money allocated from the start because you're down a unit if that goes and you can't fix it.

Allocate $50,000 to start up your flipping business.  

My initial generic and woefully inadequate definition of investor is 'someone or something that 'puts resources (financial or non-financial) "in play" (allocates resources) for an anticipated gain.'

I've allocated approximately $25,000 to invest in my budget for a conventional mortgage.