After that make sure you have your property up to standard before placing a tenant.

Again you enver have to accept it but it means you will offer it (ie. review it).This is standard for most investors to offer this.

I practiced a hundred times how I was going to break off my partnership with him.

We segregated them from any degree of competition, failure or necessity to conform to any standard.

Find Brandon's videos on YouTube for the "four square" method of analyzing homes and practice.

The standard legal procedure, as far as I understand in NC is the landlord must make reasonable effort to re-rent the property (which I will), and any vacant time till new tenants are found must be paid by previous tenants.

if a property I buy and bring up to rent ready standards then starts cash flowing..." - it's not going to. 

I will not comment as to the tax laws and underlying rules - that is a discussion you can have with your tax advisor who presumably you are paying to help you.What I will do is provide practical and business guidance on tracking time.Firstly, there are apps available that can assist with time tracking where you can specifically detail your time, who you met with, etc.

There's a few different ways to focus on a lower rate such as with house hacking and making the investment your primary residence, requesting a significant closing credit from the sellers for standard rate buy-downs (which I've had great success with recently), or utilizing lenders who offer short term rate lowering solutions such as 2-1 rate buy downs (again, ideally paid for by the sellers).

A person who has spent his 2000 to 4000 minimum CPA practice hours doing foreign currency conversions at Deloitte for a Belgian energy company may not know the first thing about real estate or anything else.