Insuring Your Apartment Building
After years of saving and investing you have finally started to look for a form of rental property that you can buy and expect to provide you with a steady income. While individual rental homes can assuredly provide you with a moderate income, you are thinking on a larger scale and decide that perhaps owning an apartment building might be a much better investment. If you are going to invest your life savings in an apartment building, you will need to make sure that you have the right type of apartment building insurance to go with it.
The first thing you need to realize with owning any kind of residential rental property, including an apartment building, is that you are going to have to buy two forms of insurance. Not only are you going to have to buy property damage insurance that covers the building against any kind of damage, you are also going to have to purchase liability insurance that protects you in the off chance that one of your tenants or their guests are injured on your property. These two important coverage forms are usually now combined on one insurance policy.
You will find that no matter what state you own your apartment building in, you will be required to carry both of these forms of insurance. Building insurance is there to protect your investment in the event of anything happening physically to the structure. This can range from having a tenant break a window or get drunk and punch holes in the walls to a major catastrophe such as a fire that totally destroys your apartment building and with it your investment.
Keep in mind that just because you have invested in a building insurance policy that it covers the structure itself and everything that is a part of the structure. Your insurance does not cover anything that is owned by your tenants, it is up to each tenant to provide their own renters insurance policy to protect their personal belongings.
As part of your building insurance you may also want to look at a policy that covers mechanical breakdown so that in the event you have a heating boiler break down or the central air conditioning system goes on the blink, you have an insurance policy in place to cover the costs of repairs as these types of repairs can be very expensive.
While your apartment insurance is there to cover the cost of damage to the building, you will find that most landlords/building owners create their own insurance fund to cover small repairs by charging their tenants a security or damage deposit. This way they are not constantly bombarding their insurance company with small claims that are going to drive the cost of their insurance premiums up with every new claim.
The other insurance you are going to need is liability insurance. This insurance is in essence there to protect you from the legal costs and aspects should one or more of your tenants or their guests become injured on your property and the courts deem that it was due to negligence or fault on your part or that of one of your contractors or employees.
Liability insurance will cover paying for all of the person’s medical bills as well as any damages awarded by the courts. It will take care of any physical therapy and rehabilitation costs as well as pay your legal fees in the event that you are sued in a court of law for damages.
As with any type of insurance, you will need to shop around to get the best price. This is not something you should even contemplate buying out of the yellow pages. While you may find that there are insurance agents listed in your local phone book that sell this type of insurance, you can find the same or better coverages online from a wide variety of insurance carriers at much better prices than the average local insurance agency can afford to offer you.
Rather than spending countless hours searching every apartment building insurance company online to find one that is willing to provide you with the insurance coverages you need at a price you can afford, you need to visit the Building Insurance Experts. We are an insurance comparison site that will take your information and your requirements and submit them to a selection of the top building insurance companies in the country. Within minutes instead of hours you will receive quotes in your email that will help you to find the coverages you need at rates you can afford to pay.
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