Can I:- Purchase clothes (pants, shirts, socks, coats, jackets) that I would wear for doing renovations/rehabs and write them off? 

I have certainly used one to purchase my primary home - but not an investment. 

You'll have to cover the difference between the loan amount and the purchase price.

One of your biggest challenges will be separating all the online fluff from reality.EXAMPLE: several S8 "gurus" have already been exposed as frauds, but unfortunately, they sucked in thousands of investors.You're an engineer, use your education & experience to start building up a logical approach to investing in rentals:)Start with this:Recommend you first figure out the property Class you want to invest in, THEN figure out the corresponding location to invest in.If you apply Class A assumptions to a Class B or C purchase, your expectations won’t be met and it may be a financial disaster.So, when investing in areas they don’t really know, investors should research the different property Class submarkets.

I am looking for purchasing a property which has house on it and 10 acres on it.

I do not have much of my own capital to use to purchase a property and was recently given the advice to either utilize private money to purchase a property or do a few home flips to build my own capital.Does anybody have any advice and/or experience starting out with either of these two methods?

I currently have one mobile home that was already on it when I purchased the land.

Bronx Flip complete Byron Ave Project numbers below Purchase $410,000Rehab $100,000 Sold $625,000Flip Before and After  

I'm looking to purchase my first STR for under $600K and I'd love to find something somewhere where I actually enjoy going for any repairs and maintenance.

Could you share if you were able to verify if there were other liens or indebtedness prior to your purchase of the tax lien?