Spent too much money on updates for a rental property.

I spent the next 18 months getting all my systems in place and getting a feel for real estate before I bought my next property.

And what I did was a fly buy program I did a big production in SF Bay Area I rented a big conference room gave out stone tickets and spent probably 60k on marketing to drive traffic to the event..

Under the IRS rules, a person  qualifies as a real estate professional if: (1) more than one-half of the personal services the taxpayer performs in trades or businesses during the tax year are in real property trades or businesses in which the taxpayer materially participates, AND.....(2) hours spent providing personal services in real property trades or businesses in which the taxpayer materially participates total more than 750 during the tax year.Like @Greg Scott and @Russell Brazil mentioned above, I don't believe that you would qualify as a REPS, but if you are going to try it, make sure you document it very well (i.e. with some kind of proof, like time cards, mileage forms, and/or receipts, etc.) so that just in case you do get audited, you at least have something to provide to the IRS agent. 

Legal isn't cheap and he probably spent a ton of money3) Court documents also show that Sief himself have over $1.3M of his money invested just like we did. 4) Scoutpads also gave up it's rights to their unpaid dues in favor of all investors to be paid firstSo this is someone that:1) has integrity2) fought for others 3) took the lead when others didn't4) funded the whole thingThat’s 99% more than most people would do in my two cents and someone I'd continue to invest with.

I have done a few transactions.. one specifically i remember were i brokered a 65 unit townhouse deal to a developer and made 300k fee..that took me no more than say 40 hours max.. but i have spent hours on deals that i made ZERO.. so i guess like i said if you had 10 to 30 clients your working with LIKE an attorney and billing them all all day long.. you can make your 500 to 1000 a day or 10 to 20k a month which to me is bare minimum to be in this business.. 

Makes no sense....When I was a GC, of course I got huge discounts, plus gifts and game tickets, etc...but we spent sometimes hundreds of thousands of $$ per year at these suppliers.

We made the mistake of thinking the person who charged less was the better option, however in the long run we spent more.

I spent a significant portion of the next 2 days looking for umbrella insurance.  

I second a good side hustle and have spent some money utilizing a real estate photographer which is one way to get going and making good money with only about $700 worth of equipment.