Good insurance, particularly with an umbrella liability policy provides very adequate protection on smaller assets. 

When you move all of your insurance under one insurer, they can also bid down your individual policies to help save you money.

Your insurance company likely has a no smoking clause on your policy and will back you up as you suspect this.

The idea was to upgrade the units significantly and raise the rents, then possibly sell once stable.

@Kay S.Assuming you are getting title insurance (which I recommend) the closing costs will be similar to a traditional closing.

This is why you have insurance, and use LLC protections.

Only thing better would be initial deposit and then paid in full upon Certificate of Occupancy and punchlist complete.Of course, standard items should also be checked: licensed, insured, willing and able to pull all required permits, reference checks.I would also commonly avoid the cheapest bid you get.  

The huge amount of logistics employment here is a huge driver to a stable rental community that a lot of investors have been turned on to.

I had very little stable income. 

Having trouble getting any quotes for a low value SFR (<100k), any leads appreciated