Not so fast on those tax benefits. Yes, you can depreciate your real estate and not pay taxes on them that year. However, if you later go on to sell that property for a gain, there is something called recaptured depreciation [1]. In essence, you will pay taxes on those gains at the orginary income tax rate until all the depreciation you reported is covered. Only the remaining gains can be taxed at the much lower capital gains rate.
Yeah, I decided to avoid getting into that because the article was already long, but it's a good point. However, to be fair, you should also point out 1031 exchanges, which allow you to defer those capital gains taxes even further down the line:
[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depreciation_recapture