I gave my contractor a deposit in December and final payment in January for a large structural repair job on a property that is partially personal (I live in one room) and partially business (my LLC) as a vacation rental.Now I need to send him a 1099 and send the IRS a 1096 (late on both of these, I recently found out), and figure out which tax year to apply the payments. 

250k won't get you far in apartments but if you're looking to a grow a biz, start small, fail small, fail forward and scale from there.

As I continue to analyze properties, it seems that the expenses are eating up a large portion of the cashflow, especially when utilities aren't separated. 

If your deal underwriting is conservative enough such that the numbers are gonna provide you a fairly large margin anyway, the one-time cost of going to/from your destination should not make or break your numbers.

It makes good income on a dollar/hour basis, and I have incredible control of my schedule, spend time with my family, etc... but it isn't very scale-able, at least not with favorable profit margins. 

Ask about large CAPEX items and when they were last replaced.

I live in fort lauderdale, I wholesale full time properties through out Florida with one of the larges wholesaling firms in this state, and as part time ( I guess more as a hobby) I design Italian Kitchen cabinetry for projects.I love you contents , I am here to learn more and more and become more.

Typically if you are new, you may want to go with a large firm taht offers excellent training, hand holding for the first few transactions, etc. 

One is owned by a housing society and they are currently building a large apartment style building.

There aren't any large units, 10 units and up around these parts, I'm in small towns.