This is my understanding regarding taxes and vacation properties:1) If you rent it out all year long: You can claim tax and mortgage interest deductions, rental cost deductions, and rental loss deductions. 2) If you use it as a vacation home for more than 14 days per year and also rent it out more than 14 days per year: You can claim tax and mortgage interest deductions, you can claim rental cost deduction (but not over rental income amount) and you CANNOT claim rental loss deductions. 3) If you use it as a vacation home for more than 14 days per year and also rent it out for only 14 days or less per year: You can claim tax and mortgage interest deductions, you CANNOT claim rental cost deductions BUT that rental income is not taxed, you CANNOT claim rental loss deductions. 4) If you use it ONLY as vacation home and do not rent it out: You can claim tax and mortgage interest deductions (can only be done if this is your only second home...you can't claim this on unlimited second homes), you would have not rental cost deductions to claim and you would have not rental loss deductions to claim. 

Can I just scrape and recover with a different color?

I actually enjoy the sect 8 arrangement because the tenant is being threatened with loss of their voucher by not paying their portion.

The $25K "cap" (special allowance, really) is for passive losses, not depreciation. 

Bloomberg.com asked real estate website Zillow.com to help us figure out which U.S. markets have been the riskiest over the last 35 years.Our measure of risk: Assuming buyers held on to their homes for five years before selling, what was their chance of suffering a loss?

Your reputation, network, and relationships are more important long term than any personal loss of capital in the short term.

If you're looking to do fix-n-flip, exit strategy 1 should be just that, fix then sell as fast as possible, even at a loss. 

This then can be assigned a rate in the equation.The third portion that represented a wilting nature graph, based in speculative RE market, assumed that   property prices reached the peak and slowly find its true value by bottoming down before it ripples back up into more stability where I call the local government to be the catalyst in lieu of private sector job losses. 

we had pulled one out of our first town house in Baltimore when the wall between the kitchen was removed; no real loss of heat since the dining room radiator was huge. 

(b) The landlord may enter the dwelling unit without consent of the tenant in case of an extreme hazard involving the potential loss of life or severe property damage.