I won't honor their cr@p with a link.In this generic post, I will try to give you a basic overview of the most common EOY tax strategies, obviously without an actual discussion of each one.

If you have a mortgage the lender will require you to have insurance that protects the asset that secures the loan3.

I am looking for the basics.  

As to the quandary posed by the OP: The root of the issue is that it basically sucks to be an RE investor these days.

And even this requires some funds - closing costs on the buy, monthly payments to the seller, and other holding costs, insurance, appraisal on the refi, etc.

Off the bat, I had a few questions that hopefully someone more experienced can help: 1. do auctions allow financing after winning the bid, or do they require entire amount to be immediately wired? 

If you ask the manager to justify a fee and he starts hemming and hawing, move on or require them to remove the fee.

Due to item 1, adding an ADU can require years to start achieving any return (once the accumulated cash flow recovers the initial negative position).4) Adding an ADU is a slow process.

I have actually been thinkin about cutting losses honestly, I am not sure this is the best investment I could have made as my first but worried about how much of a loss I would have to take.It is meant for S8 for sure, I would have a stringent application process, and give the neighborhood a C from my research.I invested there because it was the first deal that basically fell on my lap where the mentor works with agents that Seller Finance deals, it was only $3k down and had thought the proximity to St.Louis would be attractive to tenants also.I effed up on waiting to post for rent until after all repairs and the COO for sure.  

Private notes require more work than Stocks / Bonds, is the added return worth the extra work?