Simon,One of the ways you can minimise your tax liability is to set up Solo 401K plan and contribute as much as you can.

Focus on a scale and type of real estate investing that minimises the variables and makes it easy for you to digest.

You would want to buy at a significant discount to minimise the risk.

Thankfully, you do not need to be familiar with all 70,000 pages to invest in real estate but you do need a competent real estate and tax attorney to minimise your tax liabilities. 

There may also be certain tax consequences to consider when choosing the type of entity you want to form, for example, for Canadian citizens I often recommend setting up an LP rather than an LLC to minimise the tax liability on the Canadian side. 

I have done extensive research and what I keep find out is if you do your due diligence you can really minimise your risk.

The first thing I would be doing is trying to minimise how much in tax I would pay.

Does anyone know if there are best practices in storing dishwashers and minimising the chances of anything like this occuring?

A hobby landlord places more value on good long term tenants than making money because they do not have a efficient process in place to minimise the cost of turnovers.  

But I would like to minimise the number of holes cut in walls so as to limit damage and expense.