SFR Insurance and umbrella policy option through rehab and beyond

[Jeff Bridges]

I'm acquiring my 5th buy and hold property and plan to rehab for about a month, then market for rent. My current 4 are under personal landlord insurance policies through Geico and umbrella is also through geico. All rates are inexpensive and good value relative to competitors so I'm happy with them. The problem is that my Geico personal umbrella maxes out at 4 rentals as does most personal insurers, so I now have to seek a commercial umbrella policy in order to have all 5 covered (and room for additional growth) up to 1 mil under the umbrella. State farm lets me do the commercial umbrella and keep original personal policies, but I have to increase the liability on each of the individual policies to 500k from 300k, which will add to each policy. I want to see if folks have suggestions for finding the appropriate insurance coverage variety or if there is something I have not thought of. Here are some options below:

1) Keep 5 geico personal landlord (fire-dwelling) policies, increase each to 500k. get State farm commercial umbrella for 1 million. Commercial Umbrella policy at $250/yr could be more expensive than keeping my personal policy ($182), but costs will increase to each policy due to minimum liability of 500k (it is about $165 additional for raising the minimum from 300k to 500k for all 5 units).

2)Keep 4 geico policies (leaving the policies alone), original personal umbrella for 1 mil (covering first 4 units only), and get a commercial fire-dwelling policy for unit 5 with 1 mil liability coverage built-in through NREIG. Can get additional NREIG policies for each new future property. It costs $350 additional over a personal policy, but includes the cost of liability that would normally be added to an umbrella or raising the minimum.

It looks like with option one, my costs go up $234. With option 2, my costs go up $350 immediately beyond the normal insuring cost and will add $350 additional for each property I add since they don't aggregate or recognize any savings by having a central umbrella policy. Option 1 seems like the clear path toward lowest cost and easiest growth, but just making sure I'm not missing anything. Also, if anyone has any other suggestions for area insurers that might benefit me more, let me know! I've checked out Amica, state farm, geico, NREIG, safeco and already found geico to have best pricing for my units.

Trying to balance costs, ease of use, and future potential ease of growth when I add more properties. Thanks!

[Kevin Romines]

Farmers is a very investor friendly company. You can insure entity owned (LLC / INC) properties on their personal lines so long as you are the managing member, it would need to be insured with the individual as the primary and the entity as an additional insured. Claims will cover the additional insured just as they would the primary. You can do up to 20 personal line policies with the same number allowed on the umbrella. Anything more than that and you would go to a Farmers commercial if you also needed the umbrella.

Farmers also owns Foremost who has no limits on the numbers of policies you can have. If you have a foremost policy, it can be backed up by the Farmers umbrella. The umbrella allows limits on the homes as low as 300K, however the pricing on the umbrella goes up if your underlying coverages are lower. There are times it better to have higher underlying coverages followed by a lower priced umbrella. As you get more properties then the lower limits on the underlying will give you better pricing even though the umbrella will be higher priced. Keep in mind, if you have both a Foremost policy and a Farmers policy, then you get multi-policy discounts from both.