I recently attended a RE meetup event and the speaker emphasized treating real estate investments as cold, number-driven investments and actually suggested buying properties physically far away from the investor is one way to control for this to ensure that investment decisions are made dispassionately.

I would love to make this deal happen but only if it's actually a deal.

I just took possession just under 2 weeks ago and boy I have learned a lot in that short amount of time (I actually am going to be starting a blog here shortly to share what I have learned so keep an eye out).  

If you are actually wholesaling the properties you could deduct it as a business expense of your wholesaling business. 

Hopefully one day you'll be big enough to actually NEED that service, and if you didn't plan for it at the beginning then whatever profit was left is either at zero or in the red.  

I'm actually closing on a deal right now, where an agent is bringing me a buyer.

We ended up doing just that and found someone with better income and credit by waiting for it.On the topic of HELOCs, I'm actually looking into refinancing to pull out the sweat equity. 

Actually, they're on the way back tonight to meet me to sign the agreement.  

I actually offered on one which I thought was a good deal but after the inspection it turned out to be way too much for me to fix for my first deal.Many of the multifamily houses I am finding are going around 350-450k.  

I actually retired at 43 and have been working in DC since but that transition has taken a lot of getting used to.