Or properties just never pull that kind of return for that kind of investment?  

You can 1031 into passive opportunities later in life where the deferred tax continues to make a return for you all your life.2.

Are you measuring the incremental rent return on your improvements?

I would file the federal tax return mainly for the ECI declaration and to submit the city return which is mandatory anyway.

What are your returns from your real estate investments going to be at the end of that year, or 5 years from now?

Then I discovered STR and can say that the returns are well worth the efforts.

@Bill Ernst The hard money lender told me to buy low sell high — buy a home for 50k put 25k in rehab cost and sell for around 100k-120k as long as the home is in the right area, is this possible to do especially the amount of return?

Everywhere I go they ask for W2s that I don't have and the ones who are ok with not having W2s say "it's ok just get your tax returns then"On top of the lack of tax paperwork my houses are also only worth about $45k each so I would need to combine all 3 into one loan and that's limited me quite a bit as well...

At this point I am managing with spreadsheets for each property, rent rolls, and calculations on returns.

I spent the last weekend walking my target neighborhoods in Granada, looking at pisos and found nothing close to this good of a return.