His name will be appearing on the unlicensed activity records of the state in the near future.

You also need to account for the fact that we are in the Fall/Winter and there are less active buyers looking for a home.

We house hacked - we lived in 1 room and had roommates filling the other two rooms, creating good cash flow while we lived there.My husband is active duty Air Force, so in July 2016 we PCS'd from California to North Dakota.

Hello Any active Airbnb hosts on here?

I’m open to any suggestions: any books that can teach me how to calculate and assess properties would be awesome.

Raw land not actively developed is always considered an investment.  

Anyone out there who has taken a DIY approach to REI (ie not through turnkey companies) and is actively investing in 3 or more markets (meaning not just holding rentals from once upon a time but still looking and buying in at least 3) care to chime in?

Let me start by saying I’m not a cpa so this isn’t tax advice, go consult a cpa.From my understanding if your AGI is above 100k they start phasing out how many losses you can take (capped at 25k if you make under 100k), once you hit 150k then you can’t take any losses.The only way (I’ve seen) around this (assuming you’re married and you file jointly) is to have one of you be a “real estate professional” which means you spend 750 hours a year working actively on real estate and that you don’t spend more time than that on any other job.If you meet that criteria you can take unlimited losses and use that to offset other income, so in theory you could make say 300k and show losses of 350k and pay zero income tax.

As far as license for wholesaling like @Chris Heeren said, its gray, the terminology that dictates what activities  require a license are (for a fee and for another) and a fee is described as compensation or a thing of value, so it doesnt have to be money.

Keep up the great work of staying active on the site and letting the knowledge soak in :) Best of luck to you!