I'd like opinions on your strategy for balancing monthly cost with overall risk of loss.2) How do rental property insurance and renter's insurance overlap?

That is not helping an investor, its placing a financial weight around their neck from the start. 

Ya its an easy extra bedroom but typically I would think a garage would out weight a bedroom.

ACV polices will list 8 or so types of loss that will be covered by the policy and if it’s not named...it’s NOT covered.RCV polices are an “all risk” type of policy so it will only list the exceptions that are not covered - as long as the loss isn’t listed as an exception than it will be covered.It’s complicated and is why some people hate the concept of insurance because they end up learning this stuff as part of filing their first claim.

I've got several new blog posts on the website about Property Losses from our Vendor Member Len Therin.

@Dustin AwtreyIt's hard to give a rule of thumb for rental real estate because ROI and effective tax rate are generally measured over a life cycle rather than each year like W-2 income.Unless you provide 'substantial services' with your rental (aka hotel-like services), the rental activity won't be subject to SE taxes, which is a strong positive...Some properties produce tax loss from year to year, some properties produce tax income.Some people are 'real estate professionals' who can use that tax loss to offset other sources of income, some aren't.Rule of thumb: no rule of thumb, work with your tax CPA/EA.

I would give them a rent rebate for the loss of use of that room based on time and square footage (i.e. if the sq ft is 20% of the home, and it's down for 1/4 of the month, it would be 5% of their monthly rent paid back to them (not a discount, but returned after they pay on time as expected). if it's $1000/month rent in this example, that's $50.

Appreciation is not something I would bank on - in fact, should the economy here ever notably worsen in the future, you could potentially take a loss in this zip code.  

The odd weight tends to get it opened first. 

Now you need to underwrite the deallook at the market demographics, population, jobs, path of progress, etcask for the actual profit and loss statementswith a mortgage lender, find out what kind of financing you can get Offer a price that works with your investment criteria, E.G.