Most policies for rented properties (dwelling/fire policies) require it - some will write the policy but exclude lead).

I am currently a personal guarantor on all of them excluding the Freddie Mac loan and would love to lower my personal reliability.I guess the point becomes is it better to save up that money in liquid (aka after-tax) vanguard accounts and then bulk pay off down the line or to just put it straight towards the loan.

Those endorsements are not standardized so you need to review both the cost and also what is covered/excluded.

I plan to sell it after 2 years to get the main home sale exclusion tax benefit where most of my appreciation will be excluded from capital gains tax.Can anyone point me in a better direction for my first deal?  

Within most MLS systems there is a way to specify "duplex only" or "triplex only", so it may be as simple and telling your agent that you aren't interested in any half-duplexes (please exclude those) and you'd really like to only see Du- and Tri-plexes. 

Last but not least it makes more sense to put guidelines, rules, and consequences in place than it does to exclude people because the truth is if they had their life together they wouldn’t need to rent they would own a home of their own 

I have found Proper to cost a bit more but they don’t exclude as much as CBiz. 

Having said that, did you know that one of the very few reasons you can exclude even a legitimate service dog (even from a business or establishment that would otherwise have to allow them) is because it's not house broken? 

The lion’s share of homeowner policies exclude flooding as someitng they will cover this is due to the fact that they know your property (any property has a higher risk of flooding then ever having to make a claim on what they will cover) primarily fire which has a .01% of ever happening.There are many individual reasons why flood insurance is skipped by property owners. and if you want to discuss your risk you should call your agent or you can ask in this post and I will try to answer it for the beinfit of our BP community.

Ask them what their current lot rent is and what else is included/excluded?