A good jack of all trades will be worth his weight in gold as most specialty subs aren't interested in coming all the way out to replace a door knob and/or their hourly rate makes maintenance calls prohibitive.

Now if you think they are charging you for additional repairs incurred that were not expected then you need to make the decision on whether you are fine with losing the contractor over 200 bucks.

Even as a lender by trade licensed in CA, we've used the FHA loan to buy multi family homes and we keep that loan until we have 20% equity at what point we refinance into a conventional loan with no PMI.

Unexpected things come up that may force you to change your exit, however I believe that buying right makes this decision a lot easier.

As long as I have money coming into my pockets then I am good with my decisions.

As sch C income is "active" trade or business income and falls into a separate bucket, you would not generally be able to offset sch C income with your Sch E losses.The passive actively loss rules generally do not apply to real estate professionals.

I'm a contractor by trade and I got hooked up with a bank doing Hazard claims work for them. 

All these paths are possible, but they are financial decisions that you are now just realizing when you want to buy real estate.

Here's the situation:In 2006, I bought an 800 square foot home for $280k to use as my principle residence. It's situated in a small city near a large Pac-12 university. In 2011, my wife and I moved to Canada. Instead ...

It'd be good to hear from some seasoned hosts on what data points they actually find value in analyzing to make business decisions.