If you look at my posts, I have a nice sized rental portfolio so I am very familiar with all the ins and outs as I share on here a lot of my experience in the area. 

Depreciation is a deduction against passive income (Sch E), and it is never "written off against ordinary gains" (which is not a correct expression either way).Here is the IRS Publication 527 link.Dealing with HOA is not my area of expertise, but I suggest to approach them nicely.

There are lots of nice resort-style condo communities that welcome renters in that range, though.

We spent around $30-40k just in the last year and a half alone as my wife and I were planning on making this our long term house (we didnt anticipate buying a business and moving out of town) and also making this a show piece with upgrades, nice carpentry etc to show people the work Im capable of in the RE world. 

I'm now a licensed real estate agent with Exit Realty Metro (MN) and Homestead Realty (WI)) I am by no means rolling in cash (and proudly enjoy Sports Clips haircuts and obsessing about airline miles for my vacations) but real estate has helped me catch up on my retirement savings and provides a nice second source of income, which helps me stress less about taking on as many clients in my day job (or charging those clients a ton of money).My day job: I’m a political consultant that has managed campaigns, led field programs, designed trainings, or consulted on over 50 campaigns in 18 US states and 8 countries.

You might only be a couple blocks from the nice area, but it is still close enough where the hipsters want to live there because its cool. 

I know the house hacking concept but we rent in a really nice neighborhood and we have no plans for buying primary residence, I was want to start rentals buy and hold for passive income later refi and get the next one ans so on....

For whole 600sqft condo id put it on for rent at 1300-1400/m since there is laundry, and for each room id be pulling in 700-850/m (students could rent it probably as w other properties).What i dont understand after coming down from my Greenville property is how nice Bayonne is.

@Mathew Wray Combining two separate lots for development purposes does create plottage value, however, it may not be enough to overcome the fact that the tear down is going on the market and will likely be sold for a high dollar amount, and you have a nice house worth half a million dollars that would need to be torn down. 

Nice to have you aboard Robb.