It's all terribly exciting and yet I'm sure I'm overly exposed to risk/exploitation as such a newbie. 

And to exercise solid business practices and decisions that do not exploit the bottom line.  

And you wait to exploit only the best syndication opportunities, as you should.This is a great model, indeed!

I can imagine people now conspire to find properties they can exploit this way.

Even though their cookie-cutter approaches seldom fit an investor's unique goals and local market.Once you realize their incentives are about exploiting hopes and dreams rather than helping them come true, you start seeing through the sales pitch.

The 12x their income as one mentioned caused by the the exploitation of real estate as a get rich quick, hustler, pump and dump type industry is the reason why RE is becoming unobtainable for the middle class.

According to the website of the Ministry Of Tourism in he Dominican Republic.On October 9, 2001, the National Congress approved Law No. 158-01 on promoting tourism development for areas with little development and new centers in provinces and localities with great potential, to accelerate a rationalized development process. of the tourism industry in all regions with potential and natural conditions for tourism exploitation throughout the Dominican territory.In the law above, the Tourism Promotion Council (CONFOTUR) was created, to apply the guidelines of Law No. 158-01, as well as create the conditions and facilities necessary so that innovative tourism projects can benefit from the incentives granted by law.Through Decree No. 372-14, the Technical Directorate of CONFOTUR was created, in charge of handling all technical matters derived from the application of Law No. 158-01 and its modifications.Classification application files, to comply with the terms of Law 158-01 and its modifications, must be sent through the CONFOTUR website by completing the Application Form.

The first property manager exploited us and charged us for issues that he did not fix and the second one (who was an amazing management) just terminated citing that they are focusing more on STRs. 

We have bought a number of wholesale deals… at the end of the day it was people in bad situations… divorces, people desperately trying to avoid foreclosures… and it tends to be people getting exploited to some degree all in the name of profit - not so much for them; but for you and your buyer.  

Maybe not, but there are many sites out there telling tenants how to exploit landlords who don't follow the prescribed legal requirements of their state.