Landlord Insurance & Umbrella Policy. Help Needed Urgently!

[Naga A.]

I have several properties, all SFRs in various cities, 4 in Atlanta, 1 in Vegas and 1 in Tampa that need landlord insurance and umbrella liability coverage.

I used Affinity Group for 5 of them, but they told me they can no longer insure one of my properties and can insure other 4 but at actual cash only, after one of my properties caught fire while rehabbed (the one they refuse to insure any longer): It took a while and we go back and forth quite a bit, but the Affinity Group finally made the insurance payment.).

So, I need to switch my insurance company. Please let me know if you can recommend any insurance company for me and person I can contact. Your help is greatly appreciated! Thanks

[Bill Bockwoldt]

I talked to both Modern American (mentioned above) and the National Real Estate Insurance Group (http://www.nreinsurance.com/ - one of their owners posts regularly on BP) for a commercial policy for 5 of my properties in the midwest.

I ended up going with Safeco (owned by Liberty Mutual). They are nationwide and I liked the costs, and I just had a claim which was handled perfectly. The big thing you want to decide is whether you want individual policies on each property plus an umbrella across all of them (that's what I did) or if you want a commercial policy that includes all of your properties under one policy. Typically the commercial policy will offer ACV (Actual Cash Value) replacement. Their thinking is that as an investor you will just want to insure to get your investment back if the house burns down, and that you will sell the (now empty) lot and move on to purchase another property. The more traditional insurance companies offer RCV (Replacement Cash Value) which covers the cost of rebuilding your dwelling. This is obviously more expensive so some investors opt for ACV to save money on their insurance costs.

I found that RCV policies, when offered, were not priced competitively by the commercial policy carriers. I opted for individual policies with RCV and a large umbrella policy, and still found pretty good rates. If one of my properties is a total loss, I want to rebuild and continue to rent it. Some traditional insurance companies have limits on the number of properties they will insure, but I think Safeco's was 20 or more and some had no limit at all. You will have to check around for your area and see what is available. I would recommend starting with an independent agent who can tell you which carriers service your area and what the differences are - that is the most efficient way to collect information in my opinion.