Brick faced and its a small but expensive repair .  

The amount of knowledge is overwhelming, but I'm hanging in there.My 401k and Roth used to be my rock, literally my goal to becoming financially independent, but I'm seeing now how thin simply maxing out a Roth account is for me as a plan.

IE tenants move or don't pay rent houses needs more than usual turn over expenses as tenant base is tough.. etc etc..

If you plan to deduct expenses as start up costs, you should make sure they qualify as 195 eligible start up expenses.

So far have used expensive HM loans - 9-12%.

I will take your advice and I am a little overwhelmed at the moment.

I have heard of horror stories where asking for forgiveness rather than permission in this permit arena causes undoing and redoing the work (with a permit, this time) with great expense in time and $ if the city inspector decides that this or that is not up to code.

The 25% is meant to cover maintenance, vacancy, and other expenses.

While I've done a lot of research and feel comfortable accounting for expenses while vetting properties, I haven't done a ton of research and on how to estimate what I could charge for rent.

However, in CA with the annual franchise tax of $800, additional LLCs are relatively expensive.