You can paint vinyl, just use a good bonding primer.

We buy the shares of the IBC (we are the first owners after the original landowner who subdivided the land) and we will sell the shares of the IBC if/when we sell the property at some point in the future.Also, if someone were to say, slip and fall on our property, in Belize (because it is a British style system) the plaintiff would have to post a 25K bond. 

If you have other collateral, like A grade or better bonds, that would be better to leverage such deals.

This it a property we intend to buy and hold - owner-occupants for a year or two while we cut our teeth and figure the details out before we rinse and repeat.I'm very excited to finally be starting into real estate.

Repairing can be costly plus codes...GFCI protection, grounding, bonding, self closing gates, covers let alone big stuff like coping and gunite.

Quote from @Bo Bond: Ron,It's been my experience that most insurance policies "do not" cover the cost to fix underground pipes when there's no resulting damage to the home/structure itself. 

You have to consider real estate as part of your portfolio, it will add an element of diversification to the stocks and bonds while at the same time has unique taxation situation that you could take advantage of.

They are extremely busy and want this asset class to perform similarly to an investment in stocks, bonds or mutual funds. 

Not a good play in any market.Then there is the easy cash argument of Bonds, Money markets, and CD's that are >5%.

Once Fed started reducing rate, unemployment goes up a bit , then the inverted bond yield is normalized, folloed by stock market crash after a credit or default event.