@Zeke Liston @Bradley BuxtonbuWe are heavily considering Boise, ID or Chattanooga, TN and doing multi-family or buying a primary residence and house hacking/ adding an ADU.

You're also misunderstanding and heavily conflating some basic tax concepts.its either passive or not.Yup.If its not, its trade or business income.You're conflating two different concepts here. 

He mentioned to me that they were asking for outrageously high commissions, which stopped the conversation.Contrast that with Pannama, which they have been heavily promoting.

I've seen conflicting information on when/whether these costs are deductible — most, including Pub. 536, seem to apply to the *purchase* of a rental property, and resources that deal with sales have focused heavily on either straight-up sales with capital gains taxes or on 1031 exchanges with deferred gains.

I heavily invested in San Antonio real estate last year.

I invest heavily in this area as an agent.

It's all agreed to in the rental agreement.They can always contest the charges, but I document heavily and have never lost a claim.

California laws are so tenant friendly and heavily regulated I decided to pull out.  

As stated in the post, I am definitely leaning very heavily to investing in another house hack and building up the equity further for future plans. 

There are going to be predators lurking, just get yourself heavily familiarized with what you're doing, protect yourself defensively and go on the offensive.