Red flags are overly eager, offering to do repairs, offering advance rent payment, inability to pay FMR, deposit, LMR in advance in full, negative comments about present landlord, needing to move in less that a month. 

I have a guy that’s done a couple repairs on my rental. 

Looking for quality.

Nice repairs, but nothing extravagant.FIFTH, we purchased the house in 2001 for $193,000.

Then there’s also accountants, attorneys, and credit repair specialists who work with individuals with issues that prevent them from getting a mortgage. 

We cannot use the SHST rule because we have greater than 2% spending on just repair and maintenance.Is there a list of common spending activities on rental properties and the various current tax rules they fall under available anywhere?

If a person has enough money to buy a property to flip but has no reliable contractors and no knowledge of costs or quality of materials, the first flip experience could turn into a nightmare. 

One property I’m looking at everything is good, they have reserves, owner occupy ratio is good but the roof is currently being repaired through the insurance company.

This would be a turn key on this end- an established property management team and is already in place, it’s recently renovated (no/very minimal repair costs anticipated) and all but 2 or 3 units are already tenanted for the next year.

Therefore, you can deduct items that are directly related(repairs) to the rental units plus items paid indirectly for the rental units(think real estate taxes, interest, insurance).in addition - it looks like you are looking to use parts of the personal residence as a home office.Just note that, it would be hard to prove that you use 100% of the personal residence as a home office.