Tier 2: Facts-and-circumstances. Take them with a contemporaneous log.

These live or die on hour logs, market comps, and average-stay arithmetic — all squarely on the examiner’s radar, and all defensible when the file is real rather than reconstructed in April.

The short-term rental loophole

Seven-day-average stays plus material participation put cost-segregated losses against your salary without quitting your job (section “The Short-Term Rental Loophole”). Fails on a manager who out-logs you or booking records you cannot produce; IRC §461(l) meters how much salary one year can absorb.

Real estate professional status

The 750-hour, majority-of-hours version of the same escape, realistic only for the self-employed in real estate, the retired, or a non-working spouse (section “Real Estate Professional Status”).

The self-rental grouping election

Group the building with the practice and the building’s depreciation offsets the practice’s income (section “Self-rental Strategies”). The election is sticky and the rent must hold up against third-party comps.

The QBI safe harbor for rentals

250 logged hours of rental services a year buys the 20% deduction under Rev. Proc. 2019-38; a condo run passively through a manager does not qualify no matter what your software computes.