Achieving (more importantly justifying) Qualified Real Estate Professional status is doable but complex and you’re going to need your own property in order to justify having annually spending that amount of hours (it is highly unlikely that any QREP audit would hold water based on you (or non W2/1099 income spouse) allocating the required hours on someone else’s passive deal).

See below for how to do that.Step 4: Deduct as Schedule E rental expenses the allocable mortgage interest and property taxes from Step 3.Step 5: If there’s any net rental income left after Step 4, deduct as rental costs allocable indirect expenses — maintenance, utilities, association fees, insurance, depreciation and so forth on Schedule E — but only to the point where you zero out rental income.

Here are the monthly allocations (+10% cushion for vacancy): taxes (TTM/12), vacancy/turnover 5% GSR, water/sewer/trash (TTM/12), repair/maintenance (10%), cap ex (3%-goes to money market monthly), CAM (lawn/snow) (3%), insurance (TTM/12), debt service (actual), property mgmt (12% - although I self manage).   

Allocate the other 50% that was rental into a 1031 exchange and purchase a new replacement property  = tax deferred.

A big factor has been setting a strict budget that eliminated things I don't really care about, allocated a portion of that spending to things I do like (eating at restaurants from time to time, vacations, etc.), and saving the rest (sacrifice & discipline).  

Certainly that would qualify since you're selling investment for 100K and buying 100K of investment property.A family farm where a certain % of the farm is allocated to the primary residence and the rest to agricultural also come to mind as a common 1031 scenario. 

@Nathan Frost I had the exact same issue, got excited, bought more and more properties and then I realized that on such thin margins it's just too stressful.My advice would be forget about spreadsheets and being fully optimized on capital allocation, but rather decide what's your risk tolerance and how much of these losses you can stomach.

Matt, if you're still in house acquisition mode, hunting and buying and renting to prepare for a better future for you and your family, it doesn't make any sense to buy a $50K car in the first place.When I referred to how much money someone might have in savings, I meant how much someone might have that was not allocated to any other need. 

As you grow older adjust the allocation so its more conservative, so your portfolio is not as sensitive to market volatility and then cash out after retirement.

Be sure to look into how much depreciation you can allocate towards the building.