Remember that if your full time job is REA (1099 employee) you will have a hard time getting a mortgage.

The longer you are invested the Lower the IRR. 10 years is a really long time for this type of investment.If you look at alternative investments I think you can find plenty (like stock market) that would beat this and you have liquidity.For example, warren buffet (or most likely his employees), ingested 250M dollars a few weeks ago in SNowflakes IPO.

It's just not as clearly a 'business' if I don't have employees and the like.  

@Dave Foster nothing special.

@Dave Foster Thank you, that is the sense I’m getting, our accountant is involved and we were just trying to find an attorney to paper it based on his recommendations without much luck.  

Public employees get to stay home at full pay and ZERO threat of layoffs while a sizable part of the population is sweating each paycheck during COVID. 

Booming business' with happy employees.

Of course if you are an employee of the company that performs the repairs, you would get paid as an employee and the cost of repairs would be deductible as an expense.

While I have grappled with the idea of RE in the past, I haven't seriously considered it until now.After being a star employee for almost 25 years, in the end, my loyalty has been forgotten.

It would be the Child Protective Services agency in your county that manages the the placement of the children in foster homes or with relatives, etc.