An Oregon household with a primary home, four Eugene rentals, three vehicles and an umbrella had everything with Allstate. We rebuilt it across four carriers: Openly on the home, Steadily on the rentals, Travelers on the autos, RLI on the umbrella. The Steadily policies cost $864.28 more in the first year, and we recommended them anyway, because building-code limits went from patchy to about 25 percent of each dwelling, every rental gained a stated water backup limit, and one property insured as a duplex was corrected to the quadplex it is. The home and umbrella came down $299.08 and $353.40.
What is actually being insured
A dwelling limit means nothing until you know what building it is attached to. $500,000 on an 1,100 square foot house is a different underwriting question from $500,000 on a four-unit building.
| Property | Type | Built | Square feet | Beds | Baths |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Primary home | Owner-occupied single family | 1977 | 1,974 | 3 | 2 or 2.5, sources differ |
| Rental 1 | Single family rental | 1965 | 2,240 rated, about 2,274 in listing data | 4 or 5, sources differ | 2 full |
| Rental 2 | Single family rental | 1968 | 2,113 | 4 | 2 full plus 1 half |
| Rental 3 | Quadplex, four units | 1960 | 2,322 | 8 total | 4 full |
| Rental 4 | Single family rental | 2001 | 1,154 in the Allstate rating data, 2,164 in public data | 6 in public data | 2 in the rating data, 3 in public data |
Rental 3 is four separate two-bedroom, one-bath units with four kitchens. That is the property carried as a duplex, which is covered below.
Rental 4 is the one to look at twice, and it is covered below as well.
What four Eugene rentals cost with each carrier
All four properties are in Eugene. Dwelling limits run from roughly $446,000 to $607,000.
| Property | Allstate annual | Steadily quoted annual |
|---|---|---|
| Rental 1 | $1,128.85 | $1,252 |
| Rental 2 | $1,057.09 | $1,186 |
| Rental 3 | $1,923.71 | $2,203 |
| Rental 4 | $788.07 | $1,017 |
| One-time inspection fee | $104 | |
| Total | $4,897.72 | $5,762 first year |
Every property went up. That’s the honest headline, and it is the part most agency case studies leave out.
One number to hold onto: $864.28 is the first-year difference and it includes the one-time $104 inspection fee. The recurring difference is $760.28 a year.
What the extra premium bought
Three things, and they are the reason the recommendation went the way it did.
Ordinance or law went from patchy to consistent. On the Allstate program, Rental 1 carried $59,260 of building-code coverage against a $592,597 dwelling, about 10 percent. Rental 4 showed building codes not purchased at all. The Steadily program puts a stated ordinance or law limit on all four, and each one lands at about 25 percent of the dwelling limit: $151,800, $138,500, $148,300 and $111,500. Two of the four are exactly 25 percent and two are rounded up to the nearest hundred. On a building that has to come back to current code after a fire, that can be the difference between a partial rebuild and a whole one. There is more on how that coverage works in ordinance and law coverage.
Water backup became explicit. The Steadily program adds a stated $10,000 limit with a $500 deductible on each of the four properties. Adding it raised each rental quote by about $78 against the previous version of that same quote, $312 across the four. Sewer and drain backup is one of the most common landlord losses and one of the most commonly assumed.
Fair rental value is stated on each property. $60,700, $55,400, $59,300 and $46,400, roughly 10 percent of each dwelling limit. That is the coverage that can pay the rent you stop collecting while a damaged unit is uninhabitable, subject to the policy terms. We are not claiming the incumbent policies lacked this coverage. Our review documented the proposed limits and did not establish what the incumbent carried, which is exactly the kind of thing worth reading off your own declarations rather than inferring. If you want the distinction, we cover fair rental value versus loss of rents separately.
The correction that mattered most
One of the four properties was carried on the Allstate program as a duplex. It is a quadplex: four separate two-bedroom, one-bath units, four kitchens, four full baths, 2,322 square feet, built in 1960.
That’s not a pricing footnote. Unit count is a rating factor, it can affect eligibility, and it changes how an underwriter sees the building. The property had been renewing with the wrong description on it. The Steadily policy classifies it correctly as a four-unit building, and its premium went from $1,923.71 to $2,203, which is part of why the portfolio total went up.
Nobody did anything wrong to cause this. It’s what happens when properties get added to a program one at a time over several years and nothing triggers a re-read of what is on file. It’s also the single best argument for a line-by-line review rather than a premium quote, because a premium quote would have carried the same error forward at a lower price.
Where the records disagree, and why we left it that way
Three of the five properties have a source conflict between what the insurance records say and what public property data says. We did not reconcile any of them, because reconciling a conflict you have not verified is just picking the answer you prefer.
Rental 4 is the serious one. The Allstate rating data describes 1,154 square feet with two full baths. Current public real estate data describes 2,164 square feet of total living area, six bedrooms and three baths. Allstate’s own record also notes a walkout basement with finished area, which may be part of the gap, and may not be all of it.
That is a potential difference of about a thousand square feet of finished area on a property insured at $432,690 under the incumbent policy and quoted at $446,000. We are not saying the property is underinsured, because we have not verified which figure is right. We are saying nobody can tell you it is correctly insured either, and that is a live question rather than a closed one.
The primary home is 1,974 square feet on both the replacement cost estimate and the public listing, but the estimate lists two bathrooms and the listing says two and a half. Rental 1 is 2,240 square feet in the rating data and about 2,274 in a recent listing, with public records showing four bedrooms and marketing showing five.
None of those three gaps is evidence of anything on its own. Square footage is measured differently by assessors, appraisers, listing agents and carrier estimators, and a finished basement is the usual culprit. What they are evidence of is that a database describing your property is not the same thing as a verified description of your property.
One thing we will not do with any of it: public market value is not replacement cost. They answer different questions, they move independently, and a rebuild estimate anchored to a Zestimate or an assessed value is not a rebuild estimate. Read more on replacement cost versus actual cash value on a rental.
The limit we cut on purpose
The Allstate landlord policies carried landlord personal property in roughly the $20,000 to $30,000 range per property. Rental 1 carried $29,630.
The Steadily policies carry $3,000 per property.
That’s a deliberate reduction, not an oversight, and it came from one question: are the units furnished? The owner confirmed they are unfurnished and that he provides no furniture. Landlord personal property covers what the owner owns inside the building, not what the tenant owns. On an unfurnished rental that is appliances, window coverings, maybe a water heater and whatever is in a shared space. It’s not $29,630 of anything.
Copying the incumbent’s limits forward is the easy way to build a proposal and it is how you end up paying for coverage that cannot respond. The flip side matters too: do not read $3,000 as the right number for your rentals. If you furnish units, supply laundry, or keep tools on site, the calculation is different and the limit should be.
The estimate we got wrong the first time
On Rental 2, our first version of the Steadily quote used a dwelling limit of $423,000. The Allstate policy carried $575,331.
That is a $152,331 gap, and it was our number that was wrong, not theirs. A replacement cost estimator produced it and it went into an early draft. We caught it in review and revised the final quote to $554,000 before anything was presented.
Two things are worth saying about that. The first is that a proposal built on a carrier’s automated replacement cost estimate, taken at face value, is how a landlord ends up underinsured while holding a document that looks thorough. The second is that the final figure is still $21,331 below the Allstate dwelling limit, and accepting Steadily’s estimate remained an open confirmation item on the proposal rather than something we treated as settled.
We’re publishing our own error because the alternative is a case study that implies this work is tidier than it is.
The primary home
| Allstate | Openly | |
|---|---|---|
| Annual premium | $1,846 | $1,546.92 |
| Dwelling settlement | $610,849 stated limit plus a 20% extension | Guaranteed replacement cost up to $5 million |
| Other structures | $30,543 | $50,000 |
| Personal property | $305,425 | $310,000 |
| Loss of use, which covers your living costs while the home is unlivable | $152,713 | $130,000 |
| Personal liability | $300,000 | $500,000 |
| Medical payments | $5,000 | $10,000 |
| General deductible | $1,000 | $2,500 |
| Water backup | shown as not purchased | included in the quoted program |
The Openly home quote was $299.08 cheaper than the Allstate renewal, with higher liability, higher medical payments and a different way of answering the rebuild question. Note what moved the other way: loss of use came down from $152,713 to $130,000, and the deductible went from $1,000 to $2,500.
On the dwelling settlement, the two structures answer the rebuild question differently. Replacement cost pays what it costs to rebuild, capped at the dwelling limit on your declarations. A stated limit plus a 20 percent extension raises that cap by a fixed percentage. Guaranteed replacement cost is the promise to rebuild even if the cost runs past the stated limit, and here it is written as guaranteed replacement cost up to $5 million, so it is a ceiling rather than an absence of one, and it is subject to the policy’s terms and eligibility. What it changes is that the answer no longer depends on whether a stated limit plus 20 percent happens to be enough on the day of the loss. Our article on extended versus guaranteed replacement cost covers the mechanics.
The auto, and why there is no savings number here
Three vehicles: a 1986 Jaguar XJS, a 2018 Subaru Outback and a 2023 Chrysler Pacifica, all rated for pleasure use. The quote went to Travelers.
The Travelers quote held the major liability limits rather than trimming them for price. Both programs show bodily injury at $250,000 per person and $500,000 per accident, property damage at $100,000, and uninsured motorist bodily injury at $250,000 and $500,000. Uninsured motorist property damage sits at $20,000 on both, which is the Oregon statutory minimum under ORS 806.070.
What did change is physical damage. On the Subaru and the Chrysler, the Allstate comprehensive deductible is $100 and collision is $250. The Travelers policy is $500 on both. That is a real reduction in coverage and it is part of why the number is lower.
We are not publishing an auto savings figure from this account. The Allstate amount available to us, $1,016.37, came from an amended policy period following a mid-term change, which is not a clean full-term renewal premium. The Travelers quote is $594 for six months. Doubling that to $1,188 is arithmetic, not a forecast, because the second six-month term is not guaranteed to renew at the same rate. Comparing an amended partial term against a fresh six-month quote would produce a savings number that looks precise and means very little.
The Jaguar raised a separate question. On the Allstate declarations it carries comprehensive coverage with liability, personal injury protection, uninsured motorist and roadside suspended. The Travelers quote was built with all of those active. Which is correct depends entirely on whether the Jaguar is driven, and that was left as a client confirmation item rather than assumed in either direction.
The umbrella
The Allstate umbrella is $2 million each occurrence with a $4 million annual aggregate, at $1,452.40 a year. The RLI quote at the same $2 million limit came in at $1,099, which is $353.40 lower.
The more useful part is not the price. The Allstate umbrella’s rating information reflected two vehicles. The household has three, plus five residences once you count the primary home and the four rentals. The RLI quote was built on the current schedule: five residential properties, three vehicles, two drivers.
An umbrella is priced off what sits underneath it, and it responds based on the exposures it knows about. A schedule that has drifted out of date is a quiet problem, and it’s the one most likely to exist on a portfolio that has grown. There is more in do I need an umbrella as a landlord.
For reference, RLI quoted $776 at $1 million, $1,099 at $2 million, $1,342 at $3 million and $1,645 at $5 million. Going from $2 million to $5 million on this household was $546 a year. That’s the shape of umbrella pricing generally: the limit is rarely the expensive part.
One caution. An umbrella requires minimum underlying liability limits to be maintained across every home, rental and vehicle beneath it. Confirming that is verification work, and it is not something to treat as automatically satisfied because a quote was issued.
What this comparison does not show
It does not show a total program savings number, and that’s deliberate. The auto figures are not comparable term to term, and publishing a single number across all four lines would paper over that.
It does not show that Steadily, Openly, Travelers or RLI are better than Allstate, or than each other. It shows what five specific markets produced for one specific household. It also does not show that the proposed program is better in every respect. The general property deductible went from $1,000 to $2,500 across the board, the rental premiums went up, the home’s loss of use limit came down, other structures on Rental 1 dropped from $59,260 to $20,000, and the home’s roof settlement basis changed from Allstate’s roof surfaces extended coverage to replacement cost.
It does not show that every carrier in the market quoted this account.
And it is not a rate. These are 2026 figures for four particular buildings in one city, with one owner’s claims history and one set of replacement cost estimates.
What to compare on your own portfolio
- Unit count and square footage on every property, read back to you from what the carrier actually has on file.
- Ordinance or law, as a percentage of each dwelling limit, on every property rather than some of them.
- Whether water backup is a stated limit, and what its separate deductible is.
- Fair rental value, and how many months of lost rent it really represents.
- Landlord personal property, measured against what you actually own in the building.
- The dwelling limit and where it came from. An estimator output that nobody has looked at is not a valuation.
- Deductibles on every line, including the ones that went up to make a premium look better.
- Your umbrella schedule, property by property and vehicle by vehicle.
- The underlying limits your umbrella requires, confirmed rather than assumed.
- Price, last.
Questions to ask your advisor
- What unit count does the carrier have on file for each of my rentals, and is it right?
- What is my ordinance or law limit on each property, as a dollar figure and as a percentage of the dwelling?
- Do any of my landlord policies carry a stated water backup limit, and what is its deductible?
- How was the dwelling limit on each rental arrived at, and when was it last reviewed?
- My units are unfurnished. What landlord personal property limit am I paying for?
- Does my umbrella schedule list every property, vehicle and driver I currently have?
- If this proposal costs more, tell me exactly what the extra is buying.
Sources
- Oregon Revised Statutes chapter 806, section 806.070, Minimum payment schedule, 2025 edition. https://www.oregonlegislature.gov/bills_laws/ors/ors806.html
Premiums, limits and coverage terms are from one Oregon household’s Allstate declarations pages and from Openly, Steadily, Travelers and RLI quotes reviewed in 2026, with the household’s identifying details removed. Quoted figures are quotes, not bound policies, and are subject to underwriting.
Before you move on
Send us the declarations pages for your rentals and we will read them property by property: unit counts, dwelling limits, ordinance or law, water backup, rental value and deductibles, against what your buildings actually are. If your program is already built correctly, we will tell you that.