There is a backlog of falling-down houses in the in rem process so I'm surprised to hear they prioritized demolishing a house in reasonably good condition. 

Yes, your education, and don't fall for online classes on wholesaling.

I think I'll get active back in fall and winter, and may make REI my fall/winter game.

World of finance is in free fall, and being in new home development we went from running a thousand miles per hr to a dead stop in the blink of an eye, and being so high on that ladder, it was a long fall and a hard hit at the bottom.

You can use up to $25k a year of those passive activity losses if you are actively participating in your real estate ventures ("small landlord" exception) and income stays under $100k a year.So yes it can be useful if someone happens to fall under these circumstances, but for anyone who is going to have over $100k a year of retirement / other sourced income, they may be out of luck.It's all timing - you are just using up those PAL earlier than if you waited for the rentals to start producing taxable income (they normally do if it is a good investment), or a property is sold and PAL are released to offset that income. 

And instead of 53208 I'd look at West Allis or Wauwatosa, maybe even at the higher priced Shorewood, Menomonee Falls or Brookfield.

I've seen it time and time again where an investor rate shops only to get a horrible experience and the deal fall out, only to go back to square one and find another lender that can perform. 

A good GC should be doing this, but if they are not detail oriented, it may fall on the customer to make sure the details are there.It's so important to be ultra specific when writing a Scope Of Work and Contract for a construction project - of any size, even a small job can go south without the specifics being spelled out clearly. 

The building is located downtown of a touristy/beach town.Here's some details about the numbers/location/property:- $50-70k per unit estimated revenue for STR (majority is from 4 month peak season in summer/early fall).

Unit count is usually an ego driven measure many investors fall into.