I have an umbrella insurance policy and that is all I need for now.
- We do advise that you have insurance, but many real estate investors believe their insurance plan is a silver bullet to ward off all evil. It's not. It likely only offers protection in the case of negligence or an accident. Insurance is necessary, but it isn't sufficient. It is designed to protect the condition of your property, but it can't protect your ownership.
- Insurance will cover you from a variety of different issues. These issues can be small nuisances, or large natural disasters. However, the risk with insurance is that they can refuse a claim. If they refuse a claim you would need to sue them, while being sued - a miserable situation.
- Insurance companies often have grounds for refusing situations through the levels of fraud. For example, the most common issues we see clients seeking additional protection from include fraud or breach of contract (i.e. mistakenly erroneous claims about plumbing, construction, or history of the home). So the short answer to your question is that you would need both an umbrella insurance policy and an asset protection structure to truly mitigate your exposure to potential lawsuits that could wipe out the value of your assets.