What agencies do you insure your Muti-Family with?

[Louis A.]

Despite having Zero claim history, my carrier issued a "non-renewal" notice for my properties in the western-Chicago burbs. Need to shop around and figured it was worth asking the community.

TIA!

[Michael Norris]

Quote from @Louis A.:

Quote from @John Warren:

@Louis A. welcome to 2024. It is the worst this year! The only insurance companies in the game for the stuff we are doing in Berwyn and Cicero seems to be Distinguished programs through Zurich, a little bit of Honeycomb and Greater New York. My insurance broker has shopped this stuff around, but there was a huge contraction in the amount of places that will cover apartments this year. 

Also, the prices are going up roughly 20-30% across the board. Same as you, I have never made a claim.

Indeed it has been tough these past few years in the Midwest given the contraction of carriers and increase of premium. I experienced this when I lived in SoCal given the wildfire exposure and the SE has also been feeling the pain with all of the hurricane exposure. My question: Where are these carriers wanting to write policies?

 Where do they want to write policies?

For the most part they don't want to write new business at all and they are all combing thru their books trying to non-renew anything they think may be an issue. Some tech companies have entered the chat and are selling "aerial imagery" to insurance carriers that they are using to re-underwrite existing policy holders. If there are roof issues, trees over hanging the roof, debris in the yard or whatever client's are getting non-renewal notices.

The vast majority of insurance carriers are unprofitable or have just now started to return to profitability from several bad years. Pre-covid I could get a roof replaced for about $200 per square / post-covid it's closer to $400 to $450 per square if not more. Take that and multiply it by every part of a property that can be damaged and you see why the insurance companies are losing so much money.

To put it in perspective if the mortgage industry was losing money like this no one would be able to get a mortgage - period end of story. Lending would cease over night and government bailouts would commence.

In my area of NE Ohio we are considered disaster free and generally we do not have any of the catastrophic issues that other parts of the country do... welp until last week when three tornados rampaged across three counties ripping down trees, power lines, roofs, siding, and putting over 500k people without power for a week - some still don't have power nor will they until all the trees are removed from the power lines. 

So much for the good news about returning to profitability and loosening underwriting requirements this year.