I've heard that setting up appointments with multiple contractors is smart to account for no shows.

My goal is to own multiple houses to be a financial free and buy our dream house! 

I have an opportunity to purchase 21 apartments scattered across multiple buildings ( 80 total in the complex).

Given that, how can I take advantage from a tax perspective of losses on passive activity from owning rental properties?

One thing I can say about Foreign National borrowers, you can usually bet they have good savings, multiple paid on time mortgages and other loans under their belts when they contact me.     

I read that properties in this area flooded multiple times from different agent's write ups and that's a major turn off. 

Their future land use plan also calls for changing the zoning from R2 to R1 so the R2 designation is pretty much worthless since There is not currently multiple buildings on the property.

I'm currently under contract on a smaller, 5-unit commercial office/retail property. 4 of the 5 leases expire in April/May of this year, and one of the contingencies of the sale closing is that 3 of those 4 soon-expiring leases renew for at least one year (I have full negotiating power over those leases).All of those tenants have showed no intention to vacate, and are happy with their current situations.I've seen/read in many places that it is best practice to stagger leases as much as possible in order to avoid the possibility of multiple tenants moving out around the same time, leaving numerous units to be turned over.Would it best for me to try and get 2 of the 4 tenants to renew a two-year lease (which they've done in past) and the other two tenants agree to a one-year or three-year lease (both have been year-to-year in past ).

Since I bought the home furnished she said I could list the purchase date of the original owners and the actual date of anything I bought for depreciation purposes.Can you let me know how this affects me from a tax perspective?

I've talked to multiple other Detroit investors and people that live in Detroit are the only people who aren't down on investing there.