Well, dad decided he wasn't ready for the ensuing responsibilities of being a husband and father and skipped out, leaving mother and daughter in the lurch.

Have you tried using skip tracing software to find contact info for the owner and the local fiduciary in order to get in touch with them?

Reading, learning, and contributing to the forums.The podcasts are great but I usually skip the episodes that don't apply to my market, or when guests get start talking about overly leveraged deals. 

Also, the contractor said he would lay vinyl all the way through and skip the granite.

Because people skip this and jump right to techniques, we have a huge FAILURE rate of people wanting to be real estate “operators”.  

Speaking of the right expectations: is it unrealistic to find a viable wholesale deal if you call 3-6 warm leads a day (those who reach out to you based on ads you run), spend 3 hours a day cold calling the numbers you skip trace from the list you buy and end up with your first deal in 60-90 days? 

I used it for 5 seconds last Fall, and actually enjoyed it, but I just didn't put in the time to get benefit and didn't want to keep paying for it and not put in the work, so I canceled it and started using Prop Wire to skip trace since it's super inexpensive just for that feature since I was getting leads through other free sources. 

Being such a touristic island my family does some bed and breakfast and STR and has had good success.

While this isn't common, I have know people that bought their first rental and when tenant moved out, had caused close to $20k in damages and skipped town after one year of living in place.  

If you skip using a new loan, you avoid the costs of origination and high interest rates, It works well for our clients in Phoenix and in CA.