If you have a successful job, then we want your career to continue and not get side tracked (aka financial catastrophe).  

What if I had a medical catastrophe and had to sell or refinance to cover medical bills?  

I recently related a brief story about a catastrophic water flood that caused thousands of dollars of damage.

For instance, what happens if someone catastrophically injures themselves on a condo common area and the overall condo's liability insurance doesn't cover the multi-trillion dollar settlement?...

Of course, if the Fed were to artificially raise rates based on the *expectation* of inflation, that could cause a snowball effect of ridiculous proportions, and I could imagine RE being a bad place to be leveraged (actually, I could imagine any debt could be catastrophic)...

I was always afraid that a tenant would stop paying me, sue me or otherwise cause an interruption in cash flow that would be catastrophic to my personal financial situation.

I'm guessing that in the case of a catastrophic loss the 2 schools of thought are to either (1) get out of it at least what you put in (including paying off any debts and paying for holding costs) OR (2) be able to replace the property and cover any holding costs.

With ongoing climate change, freshwater irrigation is becoming a rolling catastrophe - just look at California and the eastern WA Yakima hops region. http://www.komonews.com/news/local/Washington-drou...The photo below is a good scenario to look for.

The explanation I received is that the appraiser, acting on behalf of the bank, wants to make sure there isn't a catastrophic plumbing failure that the bank would be financing which could give me as the buyer a potential reason to walk away from the loan.  

I strongly believe automation in manufacturing is going to be catastrophic sooner rather than later and I need some variation in my portfolio.