My First Hurdle

My first hurdle with buying the condo -- getting non-owner occupied property insurance. You'd think it would be easy. Like one of the guys in the REIA groups says: "Nothing is easy." It's true, but persistence ALWAYS pays off.

After calling all of the big name insurance companies: AllState, AAA, Prudential, State Farm I realized that they would not insure a non-owner occupied property unless they also had my personal residence insured as well. I didn't want to do this because -- yes, I'm paranoid -- I was afraid a claim on the condo policy would jeopardize my residence policy.

But I gave in and called my insurer, Liberty Mututal, to get a quote. It was very reasonable, but I unfortunately found out that they will only allow one additional property after your primary residence. I told them I planned on buying a couple a year for many years...they said they coud not insure it unless I was willing to go to commercial rates (ouch!)

So, I put out a message on the local REIA message board to see who was using which insurance carriers. Belonging to a REIA group pays off again! I got some great contacts that I plan to use for the rest of my properties, and possibly even move the condo to at some point.

The key point I found was to work with independent insurance brokers and forget about the big boys. A well know agency that has specialty landlord policies is Foremost at http://www.foremost.com/products/basics/landlord.htm. Hope this helps!