I am a CPA with more than one real estate business that utilizes a home office deduction (including a brokerage).

Remember in order to use a software program that interacts with QuickBooks you have to learn how to use that software program as well as how to use QuickBooks, so what are you gaining? 

I sold a few things, and have had no weird interactions to date.

Tenant agrees to a new termination date of the lease of July 31, 2015....Landlord agrees to refund to Tenant all unapplied pre-paid rent less costs for damages, utilities overages, cleaning, and financial remedies upon the date Tenant quits and vacates the property.Would you recommend billing the tenant for the damages from Question #1, or go ahead and deduct the amount for damages from the rent refund just as the tenant signed and agreed to in the Early Termination agreement?

I think the 4/2 had a 24K BTU (it was ~5 years ago) and required an extra drop from the utility company and a new panel. 

Who pays for maintenance and utilities?

Looking forward to interacting with as many of you as possible in the coming days.

A couple reasons off the top of my head why you may not be finding any rental comps:-No rental demand in the area so little or no property used for rentals-Extremely high rental demand...nothing is available (not likely)-Craigslist is not highly utilized in the area (thus rentals are not advertised there)-Pricing doesn't support rentals (ex. really high property taxes or insurance or high price-point purchases like $500K+)There are probably plenty of other reasons that could be the source of this challenge.  

However it is our understanding you can only have one outstanding USDA loan at a time (we're aren't relocating a great distance).Question - Can my wife utilize our combined income and/or a cosigner to qualify for a USDA loan solely in her name given that I already have a USDA loan by myself?

Improving the comfort and efficiency of the building is part of the deal.That said, the bigger players in our area are not quite there yet - most still seem to operate under the mode of "unload utilities on tenants" to improve the bottom line.