Savings is important - 6 months of living plus expenses to start up your business (licensing, MLS fees, professional orgs, E&O insurance, basic materials like business cards and signs, plus marketing you plan to do) seems a reasonable estimate.  

Since it is almost impossible to meet the material and actively participation rules for each activity separatly.This statement should explicitly declare that the taxpayer is a qualifying taxpayer (i.e., I ____  meet the requirements to be a real estate professional for the tax year and am making the election to treat all my real estate activities as a single activity under Sec. 469(c)(7)(A).Hope this helps good luck!

Another creative option to consider may be to do a JV with Grandma whereby she supplies the property and you supply the material and labor and agree on a reasonable split of the profits upon the sale.

Taxable social security and tier 1 railroad retirement benefits.Deductible contributions to individual retirement accounts (IRAs) and section 501(c)(18) pension plans.The exclusion from income of interest from qualified U.S. savings bonds used to pay qualified higher education expenses.The exclusion from income of amounts received from an employer's adoption assistance program.Passive activity income or loss included on Form 8582.Any rental real estate loss allowed because you materially participated in the rental activity as a Real Estate Professional (as discussed later, under Activities That Aren’t Passive Activities ).

As long as you don't materially change the quality/fit/finish of the property you should be able to use them for years (easily).

You don't have to marry the first one you speak to, find the one that works with your personality, and if they have a good reputation amongst friends (aka referrals) or if they even have some kind of reviews you can read into... because we all have access to the same forms and most of the same marketing material.

Concrete is not as durable as you think as a countertop material.

My business model is specing construction materials and designing rooms then ordering custom furniture and window treatments.

The difference in investment is less than $2k for using good materials instead of standard grade materials but it raises the value a lot more than those $3k.

Well if the Republicans move to Canada if Hillary wins they are going to be disappointed with what they find since they are more socialist than we are.As far as Denver goes I am curious to see what happens here over the next few months, I think we have such a shortage of homes it's hard to think it will slow too much but maybe some slow down a bit and have some price corrections, hopefully materials and labor will correct a little bit too.