You want to establish intent to rent if you're in a situation where somebody is offering to buy the property before you have it ready to rent and you're worried about making sure the sale is treated as capital gains rather than ordinary (flipping) income.  

You can deduct your ordinary and necessary expenses for managing, conserving, or maintaining rental property from the time you make it available for rent.so not sure, what it means by "the time you make it available for rent" is it the month or the date?

Is there anything out of the ordinary to "setting up insurance" on a Subject To purchased property?

If you have the capital for Monaco and such, then you're probably not on BP seeking advice.If Asia peaks your interest, I remember this documentary series by some Brit on (among others) Dubai, Signapore, Vietnam, Japan.

@Brit Foshee the technical answer is ... it depends.

I gather the 20% is taxed this year and the interest each year is ordinary income.

If you are over 59 1/2 you can then take withdrawals and pay ordinary income tax, If you are younger then you will have cash flow to funnel back into your investments.The major reason for not using leverage to boos return is that there is a tax on your IRA that you would not have if you did not borrow.

I believe passive income will be treated as ordinary income.

You will have to pay ordinary income tax on distributions from Traditional IRA.

This one feels like a sunk cost to me as ordinary wear and tear.3) While on appeal legal aid asked for a discovery which delayed another 30 days.