Umbrella Insurance 3 states

[Patrick Shep]

Advice on getting umbrella insurance for 7 units in 3 states (MD, MI and NY). My primary house is in MD. I was quoted $504 for 6 months through GEICO but it seems high. Other carriers I have called want all of the insurance under them, which I prefer not to do.

[Ryan Brouwer]

My wife and I recently went through the process of getting an umbrella policy set up for out of state rentals we just bought.  We live in WA and our rentals are in OH.  We looked into a stand alone umbrella policy like it sounds like you are wanting, but as you have found out, they are very expensive.  The cheapest one we found was through RLI Corp and it was $950/yr for $1 million.  We had been with our home/auto insurance carrier for 15 years and didn’t want the hassle of switching companies to get a cheaper umbrella by bundling home/auto/umbrella together, BUT what we found out was that we were overpaying by a lot by staying with that carrier.  We ended up finding an insurance broker through Goosehead Insurance and they actually will shop around a whole bunch of insurance carriers and get you the best deals.  We ended up getting our home/auto for about HALF what we were paying before and then we got our umbrella for only $300/yr bundled up through Safeco (via our Goosehead agent). Obviously there are a lot of variables that go into calculating insurance premiums, so your situation may be a lot different than ours, but I HIGHLY recommend getting in touch with a broker and having them evaluate all your insurance.  Also make sure you have separate landlord policies for your rentals.  The broker can help you with those too.  What is also nice about having a good broker is that periodically they can re-evaluate your insurance and you can keep using that person no matter what insurance carrier ends up having the best pricing.