I am wanting to sell all my stocks and just take the cash since I don't want to drain the majority of my savings/checking purchasing real estate and have most of my money in stocks.

Hard money with 20% down How did you add value to the deal?

Why not buy it with private money, borrow enough for the purchase/repairs/carrying costs, and then refinance once the repairs are done?

The other option is hard money, how good of an idea is using hard money for my first deal?

If they had taken option 1 would they have received more money? 

@Simone Montague-Jackson agree with @Charles Carillo and @Jordan Moorhead, that they aren't what the marketing hype claims.Insurance companies are in business to make money, which requires them to have a hard stance on claims and incentivizes them to deny as many claims as possible.In our opinion and 24 years of observations, it worse with warranty insurance products!

It depends if you have a lien on title already (a mortgage or hard money loan), but I would either do this as a hard money refinance or a DSCR cash-out refinance to pay for the reno. 

It's a sad way to make money IME.

AVR was good and we pulled 90% of our money out at refi time.

I spent so much money trying to bring that place together that I am literally tens of thousands of dollars in high interest credit card debt.