Purchase price: $390,000 Cash invested: $25,000 House hacking is a strategy that involves reducing or eliminating your housing costs by renting out a portion of your residence.

I'm wondering: can renovations actually help reduce insurance costs?

You can look at other recently sold houses in the area to see if the dollar per square foot cost of the one you were looking at lines up with what has been selling in the area recently. 

The reason they can give free skip trace data is because it's such dated and poor quality they are getting it at little to no cost.  

This can help you estimate repair costs for the property itself and get a feel for the neighborhood. 

The reason why is you will not be able to get an accurate picture of the repair value of the property which if you do not know what it will cost to repair you cannot accurately determine a buy price

Being a wholeslaer is having a business.You are in the business of finding and buying land/contracts for a short duration and then immediately selling them.One typical expense for a wholesaler is all the advertising costs to find motivated sellers.

Review the seller’s maintenance records to identify any existing issues or potential problems.Do your financial analysis to factor in the current rent, estimated vacancy rate, maintenance costs, property taxes, and insurance to determine the property's projected cash flow.

As someone else mentioned, insurance here is generally less costly than in Florida and other beach markets. 

If you have to pay to run power to the lot for example, the cost to run that power is the same whether you put a manufacture home or a custom 3000 sq ft home.