I am excluding people who have vacation rentals, these are turn-key properties. 

I would start talking to a mortgage broker soon to see if you can exclude them while they are in the deferment stage. 

A different strategy is to occupy a house for at least 2 years, while adding value; sell...military has better tax benefits...can exclude capital gains taxes over 10 years of holding.  

@John Lee The Auto limits he is asking for is industry standard if you want a Personal Umbrella policy to go over your Auto policy.If you only want to have higher Liability limits over your rental, then you could get a Personal Umbrella to exclude coverage over the Auto. 

Excluding real estate and retirement accounts (also not included in financial aid application), our net worth is low. 

Additionally, that $217/year of maintenance is already in your R&M % so it can be excluded.

The problem with this is that (1) the deal they think is ‘great’ is probably mediocre at best; their lack of experience and expertise causes them to either mis analyze or exclude information , (2) the ‘off market’ deal they found is not off market, it’s just not listed with a broker, and (3) with no money or experience they don’t bring anything to the table worth an equity position.At best they might be able to obtain a broker fee.

Jay, you have to exclude acquition date, but include the disposition date. 

Bonus question: 😁FAFSA (federal student aid application) excludes balances of 401K and IRA, so if the real estate bought and rented out by SDIRA were an asset of the SDIRA, I am hoping the asset would then be excluded from the FAFSA calculation.

Wow... with the rent being $1200, you could only make a maximum of $6k (excluding management, maintenance, cap ex, etc...).