Stop hanging out with your deadbeat buddies who spend all day drinking, talking sports, and otherwise wasting away.

Talk to your tax advisor about how to release your passive activity losses based on your situation.This post does not create a CPA-Client relationship.

The process is very involved as you'll have to navigate pre-construction activities that involve architectural plans and approval from the city and then the construction activities (Shovel to soil) take anywhere from 5-9 months depending on how much your building. 

Active?

It's clear that is something you're actively doing as well! 

One key tip as you begin is to connect with local investors who are active in the markets you're considering.

Ditch FM radio, and/or sport radio, and start in hard on the podcasts. 

That way you know they are active in the BP community!

Calling the appraiser to see what you can do to push it up a "C-Level" would be smart before doing any reno also, might only need a few things to make it far more valuable in the eyes of the bank.I've heard of a tactic for figuring out demand, which is to put up a dummy or coming soon listing on facebook marketplace and see the amount of activity you get on it. 

If your realtor is listing it for free and not helping, that's not much help since leaving you to screen tenants and run through leads is like asking you to perform knee surgery, you don't know what you are doing.All rental listings should get bombarded on Zillow Rental Manager and HotPads, etc in the first week so if you have limited activity, your price is either too high or the photos are bad and the copy about the place is bad.Use something like RentSpree from screening.