They split easily, even when wet, they seem to have at least a 20% defect rate, and if you let them dry out they split even worse. 

As I mentioned it's not exactly as cut and dry as I've explained, there are other factors etc..

They have a spring inside them that allows them to open and excess pressure to escape. 

@Jim Jennings An umbrella policy is also known as an excess liability policy.

Instead of the 2" upper strip of mosaic he's got 6" luckily the mastic wasn't dry and I could remove them.

There isn't excessive risk with modest leverage.

Keep your fingers crossed that the rush to buy land, any land on dry ground, South of Progress Village and Bloomindale continues because companies like Amazon pay outrageous prices for raw land just South of you in Ruskin to build enormous warehouse busineseshttp://www.tampabay.com/news/business/realestate/a...and that the Port of Manatee will be built out, like planned, to be a big container port for the Panamax ships that will be sailing into Tampa Bay to offload everything from China.

The property I just purchased needs some minor repairs (some dry wall in bathroom & ceiling need to be replaced, leaky faucets, proper mounting of A/C units, installation of smoke alarms, missing circuit breakers)My plan would be to fly down to meet the contractors, get quotes and then come back at the end to inspect the work.  

I guess the bottom line is that I was hoping to be able to use the excess losses to offset my W2 income but it looks like the only way I can do that is to scale it to the point where my wife could handle that business and qualify as an RE pro. 

People talked about buying REO properties for 20 years, then supply and demand adjusted and that's a dry well.People have talked about wholesaling for 10 years or so, now that well is MOSTLY dry too.Meaning that at some point, the furnished rental thing will be a dry well too.