If you own an apartment or condo complex, it’s essential that your business property is covered by the right types of property insurance.
Standard apartment insurance policies that you or your tenants or condo owners within your buildings might take out are not enough.
To fully protect your business property, you need a habitational insurance policy from a business property or condo insurance agency.
Designed to provide special coverage for multi-unit buildings, habitational coverage can make the difference between rebuilding and continuing your rental business after a disaster or suffering a total loss.
Case Study - How Disasters Affect Multi-Unit Buildings
During the beginning of October in 2019, an entire apartment building was destroyed when two separate, unrelated fires broke out within 24 hours of each other in a complex in South Carolina.
This extremely rare event perfectly illustrated why owners of multi-unit properties need more than just the average business property or condo insurance policy.
In addition to those, it is also important to carry habitational insurance or apartment insurance as it is sometimes called on multi-unit apartment properties.
In this instance, although both fires started within two separate apartments, the fire spread rapidly and destroyed half of the units in the entire building during the first fire and the second half of the units during the second fire.
It is a major risk that all owners of multi-unit housing face when what happens in one unit can dramatically affect what happens in all the other units and create widespread damage of a much greater scope than if only one apartment was damaged.
Habitational Insurance Covers Collective Damage to Buildings
The issue with fires, weather events, and other occurrences that cause massive damage to multi-unit buildings is that while the contents and interiors of individual apartments and condos may be covered by policies taken out by the unit owners or renters, the exterior structure including the roof is the responsibility of you, the property owner.
Your general liability policies typically won't cover all types of damage or the degree of damage that can happen in catastrophic events.
While it is an additional cost, habitational insurance is a wise investment to get protection against these catastrophic events that can render your business property worthless in minutes.
Essential Coverage for Multi-Unit Housing Owners
Whether you own an apartment complex, a block of privately owned condos, or even a single multi-unit apartment building, your standard condo and apartment property insurance or a general liability policy is not enough to protect you.
A habitational insurance policy from a property insurance agency will provide you the coverage needed to pay for costs associated with repairing and rebuilding your building, debris removal, and even income loss until your properties are restored.
Unfortunately, these policies are becoming harder to find due to ever-increasing construction and cleanup costs and many agencies no longer offer them.
Protect your business properties today by contacting an insurance agency that understands why you need habitational insurance and can outline an effective, affordable policy that caters to your needs.
