I've quietly viewed enough churches and paintings already; my goal was to break the insurmountable barrier of politeness and actually make contact with regular people, people who aren't trained in the hospitality-industry art of being efficient and polite. 

Either that means you were doing regular maintenance all along, or she was doing regular maintenance all along, or she was not reporting problems as they occurred, or you were not doing regular inspections and finding problems as they occurred, or else the house was new and nothing was going wrong. 

I make them refer to it regularly since it is the basis on how I can run a 100k a month wholesaling business.

No - Once losses are on Schedule C, it follows the same rule as regular business losses - pretty much unlimited against your other earned income and also subject to Net Operating Loss rules.  

It seems to me unless someone is physically going there on a regular basis there's really know other way to get this data.

Tax benefits go to the landlord with depreciation, the flipper has regular income.

See link for reason why: http://www.biggerpockets.com/forums/52/topics/6804...I just use the regular Kwikset locks, and you only need to switch out the part that has the key cylinder.  

My understanding is that an LLC and an S Corp basically have the same tax rules in that their income flow down to the individual and they pay taxes on that income as if it were regular earned income (based on whatever tax bracket that individual/couple falls under).So, when you ask if the IRS would want to get taxes from you on the $1,000 of rental income, the answer would be absolutely yes. 

It is no more difficult than a regular closing to assume an FHA loan.  

@Joe Kalis That's a difficult question to answer, and you want to make sure that when reviewing the answers, everyone is talking about identical situations.