It's the best way I know of to do it and it is the way I ended up filing it in my 2020 tax return. I agree it seems odd that you need to create a rental that had no income or expenses in 2020 in order to get release the PAL in 2020, but based on several conversations I had on the phone and in discussion boards with turbo tax it is the best way to do it. Also doing it this way ensures the PAL offsets the correct type of income and it also makes it very clear that the rental property is the source of the PAL. There is another discussion related to this topic where others and myself were asking the same types of questions that you are asking. I put the link below. It may be helpful to you to read through this discussion as well.
https://ttlc.intuit.com/community/investments-and-rental-properties/discussion/re-okay-rental-proper...
