I may even settle for one or 2 years negative but would not recommend this unless you have large reserves.  

See if you can settle on an amount less than that. 

what made you settle on the Tampa area?  

This will save you a lot in the long run, instead of settling for a high rate, high fee loan now.

This enables you to get your feet wet while seeing how the experience goes and once you get that settled in and you're comfortable with your processes then I'd start branching out into other investments whether it be local to you or out of state. 

They will at a minimum settle.

My audit was settled by NYS first, before the feds, which is odd because the state usually follows whatever the feds do.

Paying off the $4k in defaulted debts on her credit report, which she probably could have settled for 50-80% of that total. 

You will burn through several of each before you settle on a more permanent person, and even then they can disappoint at any time.2.

@Ian M.For the owners hiding behind the bare trust agreements, you can pull up their names by doing an online search for "David Baines: Real estate investors settle class-action lawsuit" Mr Baines before he retired was a business columnist for the largest newspaper in British Columbia, the Vancouver Sun.In this article you can see the payment the defendants (who I am talking about) had to pay out to the plaintiffs.