Move forward in confidence, go get em!

However, if you want to be 100% confidence on deductions, wait until you rent out the place or at least advertise when the house is ready. 

I have been reading books as frequently as I can to get a foundation of how this whole real estate thing works, and am starting to feel confident enough to begin contacting agents and property managers sometime soon.

Unless I had 100% confidence in my title search, I would forego the private sale (which sounds like it's dead anyway) and instead participate in the auction sale.

I'm confident I could generate high quality housing sale leads, but need to figure how the best way to partner up to receive commission on sales I generate. 

Really, it's is just a confidence game- I look at the US Dollar and it has serious flaws.

I am pretty confident I could be at full lease-up starting this summer on 12-month rollover leases.

Based on the walk through I'd say the entire basement (about 1K ft sq) will need to be removed to bare studs in order to be confident that the job is done correctly.

I won't promise that it gets easier, but you do become more confident that you can handle whatever comes up.

There seems to be a lot of hype in the REI world, so you should know I have my expectations clearly established and am confident that I can see through the fluff.