Insurance for Rental in Kansas City

[Trent Kruessel]

I have a handful of single family rental properties in Kansas City.  I was reviewing my monthly expenses with @Ian Reeves the other day and he mentioned that my insurance premium is way too high.  I called my insurance broker and he said it doesn't make sense to get a different policy with lower premiums until I have X number of properties.  He also said the more expensive policy is with a company that is friendlier when processing claims.

Does anyone have recommendations for companies with competitive insurance rates?  Is there a Rule of Thumb about owning a certain number of properties before you get a lower insurance premium?

[Kim Tucker]

I primarily use their vacant property insurance product.  we don't insure rentals much.  So I can't speak for umbrella policies and multiple rental properties.

We did a quote with Arcana last week on two properties. that is a little more than 1/2 of what I am paying with my current provider and actually any vacant property produced I have used and I have worked with 2 of the top providers in the country over the past 10 years.  

I have always figured about $100 of cost per month per $100k of property on vacant property and of late have been seeing it be more like $119 per month per $100k.  My quote was $78 a month for a $200k policy.

And their system seems very very simple 

-Register for an account

- Request a quote

- Get quote  almost instantly

- Save the quote or buy the produced right there online.

- Purchase by the month, several months or by the year.

I have been watching Arcana for several years and here is what I have learned from watching them and from our conference call this past week.

• They have not changed their name in the past 3 or 4 years that I have been watching them.
• They don't have a lot of different office staff for me to keep track of when I need to ask a question,  Drives me nuts to contact my "account person" to find they have moved to a different division or are no longer with the company.
• One single point of contact and I am hoping their website where I go to get new policies does not change regularly.
• I don't have to pay an upfront deposit to open the account to add properties to as I buy and sell.
• They will not close out my account when I have no properties in inventory. 

So going to give them a test this month to see how their customer service and payment program works.  I like simple and easy and not a lot of change. 

 It drives me nuts when I email my point of contact to find they don't work there.  Or I have this person for x, that person for y, and another person for z.  Or when you don't always have a property in inventory to have your account closed out and when you go to add the next property find your account is no longer there and you have to get reset up and pay a new deposit.

They use Lloyds of London as most of the companies I have worked with and their quote sheets seem to be the same coverage. 

I can't speak to their coverage for buy and hold, but I do think that for every service - Insurance, Title, Contractors that you should get a new quote from fresh blood every few years.  You might find your tried and true person has slowly been increasing your pricing or may not have quite the same customer service that they did when you started.  You might find that what you have is still the absolute best and you might also find that they are not.