I am in the very beginning stages, mostly learning from you guys on the forums and podcasts while saving up some money for a first property.

As someone who is in the beginning stages of looking into self storage as an investment myself, I will be following this thread.Thanks @Serge S. for starting this.

I am in the very early beginning stages of real estate and the type of real estate I want to do is wholesaling.

In my completely unvalidated opinion the roof has about 5 years left, I can see wear but I think its excessive to say that its not insurable.  

It looks like these guys are in the early stages of getting something started in Lafayette http://www.meetup.com/Lafayette-Landlords-Meetup/

Did they cause damage to the property up to or in excess of the sec dep?

The flipping involves everything from finding the property, negotiating the deal, determining what needs to be done to the property, dealing with the renovation planning to include getting it approved by the local authorities, performing the work on the property or finding and supervising the contractors or employees who will do the work on the property, paying all associated bills for the property to include HOA fees, utilities, insurance, and taxes, coordinating all aspects of the rehab which goes beyond just hiring contractors, passing all inspections, staging the property, determining sales price at completions (which may be different than initial ARV projection), staging the property (if desired), finding and supervising the realtor selling the property.  

The most common delay from the banks happen in the final stages of underwriting .Find a new agent who knows the process

So the metrics (for some of us) were defaults on a neighborhood basis, number of initial loan values in excess of early default "closing" (courthouse sale) valuation, and a 'foreclosure weight' that was a ratio of forced sales to arms-length sales over time. 

We are in the research stage and have quite a bit of money to invest and looking for different ways to make it happen.