Real Estate Professional Status - What Is It?

Once your income reaches $150,000, whether you're single or married, in order to deduct that loss against your other sources of income, you have to be a real estate professional. There are three rules to meet: Spending at least 750 hours in real estate; spending more time in real estate than your job; and material participation in long-term rentals. The IRS wants people involved in real estate on a day-to-day basis so they can take advantage of using these losses to offset other sources of Income.