It helps protect your personal assets and keeps your business operations separate.

This will protect you from a tenant claim that they really had $2,000 security deposit, but the lease only said $1,000.

I feel like I can't protect against a situation where I get sued (e.g. someone slips and falls) and they "only" choose to go after the liability insurance on the property's policy, leaving the umbrella policy to pickup anything above/beyond the liability from the STR property. 

How important is profit vs protecting your asset for a future use?  

Nothing I've read in the state Landlord-Tenant Law says anything about it as a protected class, and I know the governor recently (2023) signed into law allowing landlords to not accept it. 

What protections would I have if the buyer defaulted?

However it does allow the agent and brokerage to be protected incase of commission disputes, it sets apart specific addresses or territories in which this agent is working with you.  

I have a tenant whose condo suffered a major roof leak, which caused internal dry wall and related damage.

The borrower is protected. 

This goes back to what I've been posting for a while and that's the fact most investors cannot articulate the risks they are protecting against or how these elaborate entity structures will actually protect them and there lies the problem.