The broker didn't ask for anything out of the ordinary/suspicious, except to tell me that I would need to pay for the appraisal when it occurs (rather than at closing) bc it's done by a third party.

What I meant to convey is that  your experience with this particular agent is not all that out of the ordinary.

However for areas designated for individual tenant use (like a garden bed in front of the unit, enclosed back patio area, or an assigned parking space) you could write it into the lease as the responsibility of the individual tenant to whom it is assigned.If it is a tri-plex, will you move into only one of the units and still rent out the other two?  

SDIRA's are no different than ordinary retirement plans, in fact they are the same structures.

First, if you're looking at fix/flip - those will be ordinary income.  

The gain from that sale is ordinary income.Now, if you did this and held it as a rental for at least a year, then you could do an exchange into a rental.

The rest of the backyard was garage and patio.

Ordinary partnerships (which is any group of entities working together, with or without any formal entity) and multi-member LLCs don't have dividends.

Multiple other rehabs, if they don't sell, will hurt of course.There is no capital gains tax here, it's all ordinary income, self employed.

I use $600 per unit for capital replacement reserves for an ordinary property.