Probably the best route is a builders risk policy through Zurich…check with some insurance brokers. Remodeling is a part of the builder risk thing.
An alternate is a vacant home policy. These are costly…but Lloyd’s offers them, and so do others. Get in touch again with an insurance broker. You may have to call more than one to find either the Zurich, Lloyds, or other vacant house policies. Vacant house should be around $450 for 3 months. Zurich is about $275 annually…but it expires when the property is sold or occupied.
Can anyone advise me of how insurance companies deal with investment property? What type of insurance do you need to carry on a rental (single family home), and what information do insurance companies generally require?
What about a situation where you flip a property in a month or two. Are insurance requirements different?
For flips (if I understand what you’re doing correctly), you will probably need some different type of policy. If the “flip” is coming into your name and then you’re reselling, you will probably need either a vacant house policy, or a builder’s risk type policy if you are doing rehab first. Vacant houses are expensive to insure. Last one I was quoted on was around $450 for 3 months, fully earned.
Zurich has a good builders risk type of policy…for rehabs. Contact your insurance broker for more information.
My insurance premium actually went down when I moved out of a house and rented it out. It went down something like 10% because they didn’t have to insure my belongings in that house anymore.
Typically a non-owner occupied policy is what they call a peril 2 policy I believe, might vary from company to company some. But it covers the major things like fire, tornado/wind etc. It will NOT cover many things though, like if a pipe freezes and burst and does water damage (again might vary from company to company). The way the insurance company looks at rental property is, since you the owner are not there to keep a close eye on things, the risk is greater. Obviously there would be no contents coverage as well.
As with the pipe example above, if you own it and live in it, the insurance company assumes you would never turn the heat down so far that pipes would freeze, but a tenant trying to save a few bucks while out of town in the middle of winter might not know any better.
As for information they require, it would be the same information they require for your own home policy. But as mentioned, call your agent and ask whats available.
We are new to this. We are not contractors or certified remodelers. We bought a home to flip doing all the work ourselves. We are having problems finding insurance that will risk it. We are hoping to fix it and flip in within 1-3 months. The “normal” insurance carriers don’t want to touch us or we have to have our primary residence with them. Any companies you can suggest? We tell the insurance people its a 2nd home we are fixing and flipping, maybe we are going about this wrong? Any help is appreciated.