I live in California, and am looking to purchase my first rental property in Illinois.

We have lived in the MIL and rented the rest of the home.

Minimalistic yet tasteful staging allows the buyer to see themselves living in the home.

. $10k in losses will reduce the federal tax due by $1.5-2k.However, the state tax due gets lowered by a very small amount by using passive losses to offset passive income as I assume state tax rate is quite low (I live in TX, so never worried about state tax) compared to long-term capital gains rate of 15-20%.

I've watched my parents reach great levels of success through real estate, and I've heard countless stories and witnessed first hand in other peoples lives the power of real estate.

When AirBNB was at its peak there were people who lived in ghost streets.

I cold call in Dec 2019 for a townhouse that the seller's son was living in but she was waiting for his to move.

There are fix and flip loans where the total loan amount needs to be $100K between rehab, property purchase price and buyer down payment (usually 10-20% for a fix and flip loan depending on the property and borrower credit) (so the property before rehab can be worth less than $100K).If you are looking for a loan for an investment property you won't be living in that doesn't require significant rehab / ready to rent / is already rented an option is a DSCR loan.Some DSCR lenders will go down to a $75K appraised value and a $55K loan amount. 

I can have my management company pick it up, but they’ll charge about $90/hour plus add 10% to the purchase price.We live several states away, so doing it ourselves is not an option.

If you can live below market in your area, i consider that a win!