All Forum Posts by: Robert Taylor

Actually, I left out the #1 detail that I and the other landlords (all far bigger into rentals then me, who's been doing rehabs but still has a few units now, two of the others into the hundreds of units who of course ONLY went to city course for political brownie points!) 

That #1 detail IS-It ought to be quickly and painfully obvious to any attendee that its only there to attempt to scare away new slumlords, especially those willing or gladly willing to turn a total blind eye to what is obviously a drug dealing related rental, which can take various forms. If you're sure that you aren't the new slumlord in town, then only other reason to go is for the brownie points, I suppose, since if you found BP, you can find any info you'll learn there on here in less time.

The reason why I think Petit's class is of immeasurable value is that anyone who's been in any field of biz should know that EVERY law has "wiggle room" and a judge, who can bend the laws in a major way, which was major focus of his bootcamp, such as in the post above where Kyle mentions the part about charging up to double rent for tenant past move out date, thus YOU are being royally screwed by tenant since the new one you spent all that time finding screening, etc is long gone since sleazy current one says "screw you I aint movin yet, don't call me, I'll let you know when I feel like it" 

Well, up in Outagamie Cty where he is, Brown, Winnebago cty's you can likely get scheming tenant out ASAP in court, same for Waukesha Cty here. So, same here in MKE Cty then since we're all in WI, new STATEWIDE law passed, etc RIGHT??? NOPE! According to #1 landlord lawyer here and #2, 3, 4 . . .  if you think so just because they changed STATE LAW, well then you need to learn more about our courts, as well as read my OP here, or just look at Petit's blog and then go to his boot camp, as I'm all done here!

I sure hope you can find the 5 to 10 minutes at most it ought to take what may look long there, before you follow through on your current plans, since my experience and nearly everyone elses review of the city course was basically "Good thing I got my little gold sticker someplace in MKE city gov, since the rest of the info of any value at all in that city thing fits easily into a 2 page brochure if not 1 piece of paper!" Every single one says same thing as I thought, interesting but what a waste of my time. 

The Petit course was so full of info you CAN NOT find anywhere else, other than from best landlord atty in the area, who defends landlords daily in court here! I had a true major issue pop out of nowhere that day (a sat) and me staying the whole 8+ hours was simply impossible to do, so I felt horrible abt missing so much more info, but had no choice. It was only getting to meet BP celebrity Dawn Anastasi that kept me sane, that and the MASSIVE binder chock full of priceless info!

I'm not going to rewrite my mini book, but if you have time, go to both but if you prefer city's propaganda and basic common sense (thus avail anywhere) info dumbed down 100x over that you'll nearly fall fast asleep, city course all the way but its the inside courtroom info, well read OP of mine if you want.

Hey, it looks like this topic came back from the thread graveyard as occasionally happens and is again alive and kicking!

Its also big day for me (or really yesterday) as yesterday was DAY #121 counting from the day that the deed was put in to my name, actually my LLCs name and I later heard that can be a red flag for the IRS, but assuming my record of being consistently quite accurate with my estimated "fixed up" sale price of any home needing anything from just cosmetics all the way to full gut n reno projects, assuming it works as it has been, this should be a very nice one for me.

I have to send another "thanks!" to @Wayne Brooksfor this one as well, as this was the first time I've pulled the trigger on ANY home where the prev owner had a personal (and very large $$!!!) IRS lien on him and between Wayne's answer to my slightly frantic call for advice back in Jan, which he quickly replied on and many other informative posts he's had, helped me get the guts to decide going for it. After auction price, back city taxes and that, I'm all into this one for about $600k and probably around $800k or so when all is said and done, so its not a $40k el cheapo by any means!! (our nearby counties auctions and when the maybe 20 various law firms in Milwaukee and Chicago that handle 99.9% of all sales, leaves us just 2 days to get the opening bid, narrow that WAY down to handful of potential buys, then research and decide)

I had three others (all around $200k all in, so not in this range, which is nearing top of this market) nearly done then anyway, so getting going on rehab here only now wasn't a big problem. I'll update when its ready to show, but its an incredible home, sort of a 4000+ sq foot castle on 2.5 acres in one of Milwaukee metro areas best, A+ prime residential areas, which has been HOT! 

Quick question for @Natalie M.- what ever happened with your potential mentor??? The "buys 2 or 3 houses a day" jumped out at me and made me wonder if he/she was legit or if that was SADLY, another BS artist, too many of whom still plague this biz! Even here on BP a while back, an out of town guy was spinning a yarn and offering to sell some guaranteed return partnerships or something along those lines, which #1 made me wonder if he'd already crossed the line into selling what IRS considers securities (which he sure did not!) and that can get those selling the unregistered securities into MAJOR hot water very fast and #2 he was from elsewhere, but talking about some unnamed partner or whatever here buying some massive # of foreclosures here and unless Mr Mystery buyer is invisible, I'm quite sure he doesn't exist as I'd certainly know anyone buying in the #s of separate properties this goof claimed and I don't!

I certainly hope he was either for real, or that if not, you split before he got into to your wallets!

I was going to mention the "Just a Landlord" blog, but I see it already was, so I'll second that recommendation. He can get a ways on the negative side at times, but I think that's just because it can be the truth at times, landlording in MKE (in the actual CITY of Milwaukee) can become tough at times, mainly by getting on the wrong side of the city. Now, for anyone who is a reasonable landlord and who follows the rules, shouldn't have too much to worry about, but as I've warned others before, I've seen first hand not just once, but several times, what happens when a larger scale landlord gets into hot water and then ends up in a downward spiral, which for one not close friend but someone I've been friendly with for nearly 20 years, meant him losing literally EVERYTHING, except for money in an IRA or other retirement account of some sort, that couldn't be touched. Now, please don't take that as ANY sort of "sky is falling" type talk, its just the extreme example of what has actually happened to more than a few who've had things go VERY bad, but the landlord I knew was also certainly at fault himself in many ways, but wiping someone out, which was actually done by his private sector creditors, yet only due to what the city got going, seemed extreme to me and had collateral damage for anyone he employed.

I would TOTALLY, 100%, ABSOLUTELY tell you to go to the Landlord Bootcamp and I mean the Atty Tristan Petit camp, it is chock full of the info we all NEED, not just what the city wants to tell us, based on what they want us to do, this is the Atty who two other area attorneys told me was their top choice for the BEST atty to call for a landlord who needs a good one for anything important. So, instead of getting a day of info that's true but filtered through the idea of what the city of MKE wants us to do, think, etc which is not necessarily always in our best interest, you get the BEST landlord attorney in the area, who has worked full time for decades here and knows every law inside and  out, BUT here's the real value of Atty Petit-you can memorize every landlord/tenent law if you'd like to, but anyone attending the bootcamp will know far more than you, without knowing a single law!

Anyone who understands what really goes on with ANY biz gets this, rarely if ever will you find a law that is 100% black and white, so you can take 2 identical cases to 2 judges (no jury involved in this) and the 2 judges can come to very different conclusions, even totally opposite, all depending on mainly the personal politics of that judge, which no matter how impartial they claim to be, of course come into play every single time. So, Atty Petit would be constantly tossing in comments like "On this one, in Waukesha County (next cty to west, far more suburban and affluent generally) they'll 99% sure side with the landlord, but in MKE Cty, well who knows, all depends on who the judge is!" As you can probably guess, in general if you get judge who's personally more to the left politically, its probably great news for the tenants and bad for the landlord and vice versa with a right leaning judge. MKE Cty as anyone who lives here knows, has a judiciary biased far to the left, Waukesha Cty is far to the right in general, so I guess that says to me that you better follow the laws to the letter and expect little to no sympathy from judges and Petit had more than a few "horror stories" that day of some of them who despite the fairly significant changes from 2011, (which fixed a bunch of small, but still important issues, I think ALL to the landlord's side as well as a victory for common sense, loss for the small % of tenants who hurt all, sleazy scheming tenants who screw landlords badly) will bend over backwards to find any reason to screw the landlord by siding with the tenants who have already been screwing the landlord for months, thus the court case! It was funny how you'd hear a large room full of moans and groans every time that happened!

Now, I'd also recommend to take the city's bootcamp, which I did years back, even though I found it kind of useless, or just all info you could find on the net in seconds, BUT the value there is that it shows the city that you're far less likely to be a slumlord simply by going . 

Also, as mentioned Atty Petit has his blog and that's packed with EXCELLENT info, the guy is literally doing landlord law every day courts are open here so he knows it darn well, but main thing by far is that he's on our side or as is case with anything from the city govt, I'm not saying they're against us, but not too landlord friendly overall AND as I kind of said before, all of what they tell us in already filtered through lens of what city wants us to do, which is NOT necessarily what's best for us every time, its what THEY want or need from us! Its not all slanted hard, but sometimes biased to their wants, not our needs!

I think EVERY contact we have with anyone from the city has to be given some thought beforehand and not saying to lie to them at all or do some phony sales job on them, say if you have a plumbing inspector there for something, but just keep in mind always that he/she goes back DNS office and you DO NOT IN ANY WAY want them leaving and thinking, hmm this guy looks like bad news for the block!

I've also said to several "out of towners" looking to buy here that being 100% "up to code" on exterior here is basically a brand new or 100% perfect shape home, so nearly EVERY house is NOT totally up to code, but of course they couldn't enforce that if they wanted to. Yet, take notice of how they handled the 2000 or so bank owned REOs about 3 or 4 years ago, when city was fed up with the banks now owning all of these vacant homes and of course whenever anything pops up in a higher $$ area, someone snaps it up, higher the $$ area, the faster its gone, but these thousands of them in low $$ areas are NOT going anywhere literally 98% of the time it makes ZERO sense money wise to do anything other than to bulldoze them, yet the city started telling banks to bring them up to code, or they start daily fines! Suddenly, I knew a bunch of guys, the craigslist contractor type, or the ones on the marginal end of things, getting hired by asset mgrs like one in Dallas and one in Twin Cities and they'd be sticking usually 10 grand minimum and often 15 or 20 grand, but ONLY EXTERIOR work, insides still trashed and stripped of most or all metals, etc so there was no way in hell 98% of them was going anywhere, they'll still get bulldozed someday, since not many "investors" look to stick total of $100k into house on block where the best home will NEVER go for over $50k or $60k! 

If the banks didn't comply though, city said they'd begin to fine em ASAP and I forget what it is, but  even at $20/day per violation (might be $100, $200 not sure!) its easy to rack up thirty of them on some beat down old home, well that's $600 PER DAY AND THEY CAN GET A CIVIL JUDGEMENT ASAP on that if you say screw payin them! That's exact same hammer to use to CRUSH in short order several big landlords incl the one I knew, who'd literally made millions in maybe 15 years, ALL GONE!!

Well, I've succeeded in writing another mini-book but mainly I'd say just always keep in mind there's politics invovled here, BUT its not tough at all to keep the city perfectly happy simply by being a decent owner/landlord, which also includes getting the best possible tenants, but that's something I think we hear a LOT, screening and selecting tenants to get the right ones, is HUGE! If you piss them off though, they can easily make it very painful for you! Lastly, the Petit bootcamp is also put on by the AASEW, which I'd highly recommend taking a good look at, you get some decent bennies like 20% all HD paint, which is HUGE for me as I love Behr paint, that alone pays the $99/yr for membership 10 or 20x over for me! 

Not to resurrect old threads, but this one popped up while I was searching this morning to prove to a guy I've hired recently to help with a backlog of several homes I need to get finished why he MUST use a layer of thinset BAG mortar under the backer board I have him installing on the floor of a bathroom we will be tiling TOGETHER, since he's not a full time tile pro and I not only love using ceramic or porcelain tile for bathrooms (or natural stone for my higher end projects) but I'm also picky as hell about the finished product and from what I've seen, other than the full time tile pros, 90% of installs done by either someone who's hired or DIY are done either poorly or just flat out wrong.

There is a GREAT resource on the net though, honestly as good as Biggerpockets is for a wide variety of real estate related questions, this site "The John Bridge Tile Forum" is for ANY sort of tiling related questions. It is free to join and anyone can go on there and ask anything from a simple question that gets a simple answer, all the way to people who all the time will start a thread titled something like "Mary's first ever master bathroom gut and renewal" where the thread may end up taking 15 pages, as she begins with the planning stages for her DIY project (or maybe she's hiring someone for the physical work) and you can see it progress all the way to when she puts the fuzzy cover on her new toilet seat cover in her brand new, totally redone and retiled bathroom! Their many moderators who are real, full time tile guys/gals will usually sort of assign themselves to a thread like that, where that one person will follow it all the way through, but usually others will chime in as well. Like I said, if you can see the value people get here from BP, you'll see that same incredible wealth of info there for info on ANY aspect of PROPERLY installing tile.

As far as this particular thread goes, glad to hear there haven't been any issues and to be honest, as long as it is properly screwed down AND you have a proper subfloor (something else that I see so many "I've been doing this for years" type guys be clueless about) it should be fine for years, but it won't have the lifespan of a properly installed job with the thinset bed under the backer board.

Three other very common MAJOR errors I've seen time and time again, even from the "years of experience" crowd are the subfloor issue, which I won't go into detail on here, but that truly involves the deflection of the floor, whch involves the size, span and type of material of the joists and then what is used for a subfloor on top of them (and using any natural stone vs ceramic/porcelain requires a MUCH stronger floor) 

Second is the mixing of the thinset mortar. (and if "Handyman Pete who keeps being a harda** about his "years of experience" tiling shows up with a bucket of that pre-mixed mortar for anything other than a backsplash, push him out the door and lock it immediately!) On any bag of thinset will be the part where it says usually to mix it for several minutes, then let it stand for usually 10 min or so, then mix it a second time for maybe 3 to 5 minutes. For whatever reason this is, according to the REAL pros and the manufacturers, it is VERY important to follow those directions, even though if you simply mix it for a few minutes and skip the rest, the mortar seems no different to work with than if you follow the directions correctly, even if it seems like a waste of time. Apparently though, those extra steps are crucial to getting the right results, which should be a tile job you can come back to in 10, 20 or even 50 years and it still looks great! 

Third is properly waterproofing a tub surround or shower area, which considering the hysteria so many people have over mold, which yes can be deadly but I'm sure many here have seen what I've seen where even a tiny bit of of simple mildew or ANY kind of mold, not just the "bad mold" sends buyers running for their lives, seems like a stupid step to skip. Yet, I'd bet half of the Handyman Pete type characters have never heard of Red Guard, Kerdi or any other waterproofing method!

As a broker myself (thus with mls access) who's constantly "comping" my own projects as well as many more properties that have come up as potential purchases, I have to say that the times I did see what the "zestimate" was on a place I had comped myself, not only was it ALWAYS off but it was usually well off and I saw no rhyme or reason as to why or what might be the reason for that, some were way high, some far too low, etc. 

I occasionally stop by another forum like this, but for realtors where a lot of high volume realtors talk shop (I personally pretty much just handle my own projects, but these realtors work with LOTS of buyers/sellers) and there are enough stories on there of the various hassles and downright hell that yet another ridiculously inaccurate zestimate has caused yet another realtor. Taking on and selling a listing or working with a buyer is a lot more time intensive than a lot of people realize, so many things pop up and the very high volume, full service realtors usually put in some crazy hours each week, working 80+ hours a week in especially busy weeks is common and they need to manage their time to the minute, so having to waste not just minutes, but sometimes hours and hours just to undo whatever damage or screwup those stupid zestimates caused this time drives them insane when otherwise they're counting the minutes spent on each task that week!

@Lee L. has some excellent points, especially the part about comps, or being really dead on accurate with comps, being an art-or I'd say 50/50 art and science (or really stats and figures I suppose is more accurate) 

@Mike H. also has some good info, although he mentions "appraisers" a few times and I'm not sure if he specifically means people who are actual appraisers or not, but I'd say that the realtor he mentions who pulls her comps from properties so far off from what he's looking at, so that makes me wonder why he's still using that realtor. I can see the "one in a million" case where some ridiculously unique property can only be comped against some old sale or something out of the immediate area, but otherwise that makes no sense.

Lee's advice of knowing the area and I mean that immediate area as well as the city and the entire metro area is huge. One example I have is a home I renovated recently, an older home in an area of 99% older (1900 to 1930s) homes that had 4 bedrooms when I bought it. Three of them were decently sized compared to homes in that area and the 4th bedroom was quite small with a rather useless layout, so I combined it with the 3rd bedroom and made a master suite with a full master bath. 

Now this was in an area where you'll find very few families with more than 2 kids, in fact you won't find all that many families with kids at all, its a lot of singles, childless couples, empty nesters, etc. So, losing a 4th bedroom and gaining a sweet master suite where among other things, I had all new 3/4" PEX water supply lines run all the way from the meter to the two all new upstairs bathrooms, so you had the "shower of power" while many of the neighbors had well kept older homes, but each morning had to shower under whatever dribbled out of those old, clogged up galvanized pipes!

Yet, had I been out in one of the many suburbs here, including some within just a few miles, where its one family with kids after the next, going from 4 bedrooms down to 3 would normally have people thinking I was insane!

My point from the NYC example was that back then, pretty much EVERY indicator said "don't invest a cent here!" yet, due to HUMAN factors, emotional factors, like the rather sudden shift of people moving back to urban areas after decades of nearly everyone, especially retirees, wanting to move OUT of urban centers for the suburbs. That wouldn't have shown up on ANY numbers or stats based chart or research, it was an unpredictable emotional shift. (and I had an accounting major and econ minor, besides being one of my main areas of interest since college, so I know a few things on this stuff) 

They've been predicting that the fed just HAS TO increase rates for quite a while now, just like how you have been able to find "doomsday economists" for decades and they've always had some data that sounded pretty relevant to back up their doomsday scenarios. Now they all go on youtube, they used to send out mailers and newsletters back in the snail mail days and for whatever reason, back when I was in high school in the late 80's/early 90's I must've ended up on some mailing list as someone susceptible to buying into doomsday economic theories, because they sent them addressed to me, to my parents house all of the time! I'd probably get at least one per week from yet another doomsday guy!

I certainly don't think economic data should be ignored, that's why I took all of those econ classes, but there's a human factor at work as well, which often overrides any purely numbers based trends.

Hi Nick,

Wow! There are a LOT of topics that have been covered or at least touched on in this discussion and it isn't even 24 hours old yet! I'll just touch on a few ideas or theories that I've developed over the years, but these aren't my "rules" by any means, because I don't think anyone can have "rules" that apply to everyone, since not only are everyone's goals different, but everyone's motivations are, personal situations in everyone's life that will inevitably effect the outcome of their moves and just plain old luck always comes into play as well!

I don't think people should get too wrapped up in any of the various ratios, percentages, etc other than for general rules of thumb, with the exceptions of any hard and fast rules someone else will follow that you have to play by, like a lender's rules and ratios for who they'll lend to. If you can't meet their rules, well then you won't get the loan! (unless of course you have some special situation, like your well heeled uncle who's a member of the same country club as the bank CEO, who by vouching for you gets you that loan!)

I also think people have to always keep in mind that no matter if its a $20k house in a very low priced area or a huge 100+ unit apartment building, each and every piece of property and the structure built on that property is its own, unique thing. You can have two supposedly "identical" properties, lets say for example, two 4 unit residential buildings built by the same builder, right next to each other and they're not too old as far as buildings go, built in 1995, so they're now 20 years old. They're both for sale at the same price and look pretty much the same in the listing pics. Yet, there's a million different factors that could make one a far better choice than the other and sometimes even having a perfectly competent inspector inspect them won't tell you which one, sometimes it will. Maybe the builder, which like pretty much every builder does, subbed out much of the trade work to various plumbers, electricians, etc and they used a different plumber on the one and that plumber did something different in their work which will cause a major issue in a few more years, who knows! Maybe one competent inspector would notice this, while another competent inspector won't.

My point is that there are MANY intervening factors that are hard to predict that come into play and from there, its up to how you (or whoever you have handling this stuff) handles these issues that can determine the difference between major success and ruin. Maybe a "cheap fix" will fix the problem just fine, maybe it will cause a much larger problem!

As far as trends in real estate pricing, or the Bay Area in particular, again there are MANY factors at work there. Obviously, the Silicon Valley mega boom of the last 20 or 30 years has been a major factor and now every last one of the other 49 states is gunning for the tech biz, but will that kill the Silicon Valley boom? 

I recently read several articles about San Francisco itself, which is of course 50 miles or so from Silicon Valley (which itself has no defined borders as its not an actual city, county, etc just a general area) and how many long time locals are fed up with how extremely expensive even formerly impoverished parts of SF have become. Will that stop the boom in SF, where you'd think given the long time political climate, it would be the type of place that might try to stop these rapidly escalating prices? Yet those huge price jumps also mean huge increases in property tax revenues and we all know that nearly everyone in government LOVES having more money to spend! 

Also, look at NYC, which in the 70's and into the 80's was becoming more violent every year, even in the nicer parts of Manhattan and was literally almost bankrupt at one point, murders and arson were rampant, they had blackouts, the mob had its hands in the pockets of literally every business no matter how small, people were predicting the most dire of futures and many big businesses were seriously drawing up plans to exit NYC, either for the burbs or for another part of the country and some did leave. Of course, back then they didn't know 9/11/2001 was coming either, if they had then many people probably would've simply abandoned NYC altogether. Had you bought up a bunch of real estate there during those days, you'd probably be on the Forbes 400 list today!

Trying to tie this altogether, I commend you for your research and planning on this, but also want to interject the point that there are MANY totally unpredictable variables that will ALWAYS come into play and its how you handle those variables that in the end makes all the difference!

Hello Trevor,

Welcome to BP and I could just respond by saying "ditto" to what @Ramon Jenkins said, as I agree with his assessment on this and know from his many other comments that he knows the Milwaukee area (not just this area) well, but I figured you'd probably want a few more details. 

First though, I MUST ask, WHAT is that pole in the middle of the room in photos #7 and #8 for the 6th St house??? Of course, no one here will probably believe me on this, but I've never been a fan of "strip clubs" (I swear to God that's the truth!) but the first thing I think when I see a chrome pole in the middle of a room in a mls pics or any house for sale pic is "stripper pole"! Is there a hole in the ceiling open to the 2nd floor and thus its like a fireman's pole for quick exits? Maybe that's the case, but I'd think generally having a chrome pole in the middle of the living room pic for ANY house, whether its for extra quick exits from the 2nd floor, for "pole dancing" or some other use I'm missing here, isn't the best idea and I'd suggest taking a different angle on that room's shot that somehow omits that pole. 

Also, while the place certainly looks better than the average hoarder's home, there's an awful lot of clutter in many of the pics, including the pile of pans and other food related items in the kitchen pics and to any smart landlord looking to minimize unnecessary maintenance costs (or having to fight over the bill with the tenant if its clearly their own fault) seeing that food related mess just screams bug or cockroach infestation, which=big bill for pest control company, possible problems with city of MKE health dept and Dept of Neighborhood Services (DNS-includes all inspectors, etc) and if a landlord, gets on their bad side, they can and have literally driven even big landlords into bankruptcy. You do NOT want to get on the DNS "bad landlord" list and MKE isn't known as being particularly landlord friendly, although if you're a landlord who keeps up their properties and doesn't rip off their tenants, you shouldn't have any problems with them.

Lastly, one of the "rules of thumb" regarding RE investing that I've always thought made great sense and I've heard many other investors say they believe in this rule as well, is if you buy the cheapest house on the best block, you usually can't go wrong. I get where you're touting the fact that its apparently a well kept home, but the line where it says "look no further than the most beautiful house on the street" sounds to me to be in direct violation of this rule and makes me wonder what the rest of the block looks like!

Hi Antione, 

I'd recommend talking to any local independent insurance agent, since they'll be able to check with multiple companies and find the best rate for you and what you need for coverage. I'd also recommend talking to at least a few independent agents, since there are LOTS of insurance companies out there and the first one you call may not check with one or more companies that another agent will check with and in the end, you may well end up saving a LOT of money, since proper coverage for any rehab project is much more expensive compared to "regular" homeowners coverage. I'm not sure if the major insurers like State Farm, etc offer this type of coverage, but I've just never checked and they might, so you might as well try calling an agent for State Farm, Am Family, etc since its only a few minutes of your time if the answer is "No"! 

Also, this brings up another issue that I think a lot of people looking into the rehabbing biz or even some who've done it for years and have been lucky enough to never have to make a claim skip right over, which is having the RIGHT coverage. Of course, insurance companies are famous for trying everything they can to NOT PAY out on some claims and I honestly can't blame them in some cases if someone taking out a policy wasn't honest with them as to what they were doing with a house they want insurance on. (and PLEASE don't think I mean that this is what YOU would be doing, I'm just talking in general here, based on years of experience)

I've seen and heard about all sorts of stuff, like a flipper wanting their dumpster dropped off in back of the house, so just in case someone hired by the ins co drives by to check (happens all the time!) they don't see a big dumpster full of demo junk and figure out there's a rehab going on, since the flipper took out a regular homeowners policy and ignored the fine print saying they won't cover you if you're doing a major rehab for profit on this place! If someone wants to do that, well I guess that's up to them if they want to take that risk, but in ANY major claim, whether its a fire, injury, etc the ins co will investigate the heck out of things and will almost certainly figure out the true story and deny the claim. 

One term I've heard used a lot is a "builders risk" policy, but I'd say just be honest with the agent and tell them you're doing a rehab there and then you can sleep at night, knowing that IF something goes wrong or horribly wrong, you won't get sued for everything you have!

Since this comment is already long enough, I'll just briefly cover the part about also checking to make sure ANYONE who you hire, whether its a contractor or just some guy to help clean up junk for a day is properly covered as well. If you hire anyone directly, you MUST have workmen's comp insurance, or you're taking another MASSIVE risk, both if he/she gdts hurt as well as with the government finding out and fining the heck out of you. For contractors, I've learned to not just always ask for a proof of insurance form, but to also call their insurance company and make sure they actually have coverage! I've had three times now when roofers (probably the most dangerous of all jobs involved in a rehab) have handed me perfectly good looking proof of insurance forms and they didn't have insurance! One was a policy that apparently had been in force, but that they stopped paying the bill on and was now cancelled and the other two times, as soon as I started reading off the policy #, the ins co person immediately said "That's not one of our policy #s!" so the roofer must've just printed up their own bogus proof of insurance form, which I suppose with a computer and a printer, isn't too hard to do these days!!!

I should finally ad that I've learned that even though you can go on Craigslist and other websites and find all sorts of ads for contractors, handymen, etc (including a lot of totally legit contractors who have insurance, are licensed, etc) there are a LOT of them who have zero insurance, zero licenses, etc have people they hire and have zero workmens comp coverage, etc so hiring one of those clowns puts YOU in a bad spot if anything goes wrong! If one of THEIR workers falls off of YOUR ROOF, guess who's going to get sued for that??? Just cover your behind is what I'm saying and make some money!

Good luck with your projects!