liability insurance on first single family rental

[Trina P.]

My husband and I just made our first property purchase. We are buying in Alabama and live in California.

We are going to postpone getting an LLC until we get a few more properties.

Being out of state a lot of the insurance agencies will not offer an umbrella policy that covers our assets outside of the Alabama. On top of that, a lot won't offer an umbrella policy unless my personal auto and home insurance is under their name as well.

I use AAA for my personal home and auto coverage. They told me in order to qualify for an umbrella policy I would need to increase my personal auto and home insurance policies.

Here are the numbers:

My home and auto policy would be increased by an additional $180 per year

The umbrella policy would be an additional $263 per year

Here is my question: Because this is our first property, we are considering just increasing the liability on the property to $1M instead of using an umbrella policy. Thoughts? Good idea/bad idea, any tips would be greatly appreciated.