But in most cases, yes it can give your personal assets protectionIf you do hold them in your personal name, I would suggest that your insurance policy has the highest amount of liability coverage that you can get and that you follow that up with an umbrella policy for 1-5 million beyond that.

You will also want to get at least a $1,000,000 liability umbrella policy on top of that. 

A good insurance policy and even an additional umbrella policy will get you the protection you need. 

So you get both the service from having the local person (my cell where you can call me anytime), but the ease of transferring documents in several markets (so you don't have to keep re-sending) by being under the umbrella of the larger company.

I have a 2 million umbrella policy to protect me from liability.

Most times investors have their main; home,  auto, umbrella insurance with a direct writer & since most direct writers;  allstate, statefarm, usaa, etc won't write the investment properties it forces the investors to contact independents.

I have several SF rental houses in metro Atlanta/Decatur & middle Tennessee, all with mortgages in my own name, and too many to include in my personal liability umbrella policy.  

@David Johansen I do agree with Sebastian in that you are better off just obtaining a solid umbrella insurance policy.

While I'm not sure on Virginia, MN allows series LLC's and new ones are a cheap 1 time fee with free auto renewal so it made sense for me at least to setup a new LLC per property.An alternative may be to purchase umbrella insurance if you are worried about protecting the assets within the LLC.

You can 1031 Exchange into an upREIT (the "up" stands for umbrella partnership), which is also known as a 1031/721 Exchange.