Nothing was happening and it looked like the construction was interrupted.This underscores my policy of not giving any money to a developer in Mexico unless I know them personally or somebody I trust knows them.

I always recommend purchasing replacement cost policies whenever possible vs an actual cash value policy. 

I've been doing some research for rental property insurance policies and see that USAA has some very competitive rates with good coverage.

In the mean time, I have had to extend my builders risk policy given the additional time required, and the holding costs continue to build up.

Given your payment is $1200 (I am guessing that is PITI), then you have $56.25 in extra income each month, or $675 per year.

Most renters policies are for $100K liability.

- What are the Airbnb policies in place in Palm Springs and Joshua Tree?

-If you are looking for privacy so that people can't look you up as the owner of the property in county records, a privacy trust can take care of that, you don't need to open an LLC and deal with all the hassles (depending on LLC laws in your state) of owning and operating an LLC.Bottom line: depending on what you are trying to do, you can probably get by with an umbrella policy and/or a trust until your RE holdings grow to a substantial amount.

You should look into attending a career expo and talking face to face with some brokerage reps and get a feel for how they do business.I work with West USA Realty and think they're great, but I'm sure anyone else would say the same thing about their brokerage so I'd take such recommendations with a grain of salt.You'd probably want to know their policies on handling your own transactions.

Like @Bryce Wong mentioned - how much to charge for your security deposit, and whether to charge last month's rent up front is usually dictated by local custom, so you need to know what policy other landlords in your area are going with.I recommend looking at other rental listings on Zillow, Trulia, Hotpads, etc in your neighborhood - usually those terms will be included by the more professional property managers/landlords.Another consideration is the total cost.