But it’s how all of the successful professional buyers do it. 

All types of different real estate professionals across 3-4 days. 

To me, engaging these professionals seems costly.

Are you a real estate professional?

These people could go to a state accredited RE school, learn a lot more and for a LOT LESS. 

Professional photography is a MUST.

I’ve travelled to 45 of the 50 United States mostly while I was touring as a professional actor and singer from Seattle to New York.

It seems the cons are rather obvious (diverting my focus and attention, having to find another network of professionals I can trust, less economies of scale, more travel) and I'm not sure there are a whole lot of benefits.

However I want to portray a professional business look.

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.