All Forum Posts by: Jason Bott

@Ken Gurta You will be in the best position for savings if you keep all policies together and stay in the personal lines side of the business.  I only do commercial programs, and the cost savings does not pic up until you have 4 or 5.

Bundle all your policies together and contact several direct writers similar to your current company.  With a home, autos, rentals, etc, you will get a lot of attention from those agents.

@Gonz Trevino I comment on these topics often and feel the clarity of what you are trying to protect, equity in the llc or personal assets and other business interests, is not always clear.  Most who commented on this topic own their property outright.  So the question pertains to protecting the $100k-$200k of equity in the entity.

@Curtis Yoder your are blending a few insurance terms, but know what you are asking. 

1)  Blanket insurance is a coverage form.  It takes the total of all your property locations, adds them up, then extends that amount to each location.  Example, 10 homes @  $100k each, would give you a blanket limit of $1,000,000.  You then have $1,000,000 coverage for any 1 loss (there are restriction to this statement but wanted to keep short).

2)  You are looking for a commercial insurance product that schedules unlimited amount of locations on 1 policy.  The direct writers (state Farm, All sate, etc) will most likely not have the ability to do this.

You should be communicating with an independent broker who is in the commercial side of the business.  An independent personal lines agent may not know the market as well. 

At the moment, state by state, Oklahoma is probably the toughest state to get affordable property insurance in. 

Good Luck

@Stan Butler @Darrell Shepherd There are master programs for both flippers and buy and hold, and some that can handle both. 

I find that if the policy is competitive on the flips, it's high on the buy and hold.  If it is competitive on the buy and hold, they don't like the flips.  When chasing the lowest premium, most investors end up having 2 programs.  When trying to streamline administration they can end up just the 1. 

@Chaim ZigelmanAnswers can vary greatly depending on your bank requirements, your risk tolerance and the type of property.

I would start with what your bank will require you to carry.  Sometimes it's a nonissue, but when it is, it pigeon holes you into very few options.

Are you looking for full replacement cost or Actual cash value?

If it's an old building, you may want to purchase Ordinance and Law coverage.  If the property is damaged, and you go to rebuild, many time the building is not up to code.  This coverage covers the cost of to bring it up to code. 

@Chaim Zigelman It is possible his insurance could be $1500, but unless you know what the policy is covering, it really means nothing. 

*He could have grandfathered pricing that will not pass to a new owner.

*He could be insuring the building for 40% of what you will need to insure it for

For this reason use your $4,000 quote as the basis.  If you can improve on that, great.

@Dawn Oree If you approach insurance agents with the above statements, you will get all sorts of different policies and you will be comparing apples to oranges.  What you need to do is determine how you want to policy to react when there is a claim.

What do you want the policy to do when you have a $5000 claim?  If you will pay that out of pocket, then you may want to pass on a lot of the additional coverage's.  If you want as little out of pocket, then these additional coverage's are a must.

As far as individual coverage's go, without making this post several pages long, the coverage that can have the largest impact on claims being paid out is Replacement cost or Actual Cash Value.

Replacement Cost will replace your property no matter the age or value of the property lost.  A roof that is 25 years old will be replaced with a new roof.

Actual Cash Value will give you the cost of the value of the property, less depreciation.  With that same roof that is 25 years old will probably only get 40% - 50% of cost covered.

Hopfully that gets you started in the right direction.

@Ken Gurta your approach and insurance carrier selection will depend on how many and what kind of properties you have.  Can you give us a snap shot of your current holdings and any changes in the next year.

@Eric Hathway Here renters insurance should pay for her temporary housing. 

@JR T. In hopes to bring this post to a timely conclusion, I just emailed you the seemingly elusive Liability only quote.