Landlord insurance lets you reap the benefits of your home rental business without the threat of liability claims and disasters swooping down and absconding with your profits.
Hi, I’m Pat from PJ Properties and this is my story.
Our family invests in real estate by buying small, single family homes as rental properties. We rent them out to qualified tenants. How did we start? We kept our own starter home when we upgraded to a bigger personal property. Because we had kept it, we could then rent it out. Along the way, we bought more rental units as investment property. It’s how we put our kids through college and now it’s our retirement cushion.
They kids earned money for themselves by helping us maintain the rental units. This was when they were younger of course. Now they have families of their own that they take care of. As a result, we now pay a lovely couple to handle the maintenance and fixing up. We still handle the business end of it. It’s been a good deal for us with only a few mishaps with tenants that seemed serious at the time. Of course, we always carried a good landlord insurance policy to protect us against financial loss. This has given us peace of mind.
Our insurance agent set up policies for us that would cover losses to the property like fires. If equipment to maintain the house was stolen in a break-in, the insurance would cover that too. The other landlord insurance policy gives us liability protection against claims in the event a tenant suffers a physical or financial loss while living in one of our rental units.
The liability coverage also protects us from losses because of perceived negligence claims by tenants or visitors. As property owners we don’t knowingly allow hazardous conditions to exist on our properties, but sometimes accidents happen. There are times when fault for a mishap is clearly not due to property conditions, but people will file a claim anyway. This is what landlord insurance is for. You can’t know when property damage, break-ins, water damage or medical expenses coming your way, but you can give yourself peace of mind that your liability insurance is in place.
We are fortunate to have really good landlord insurance for our rental properties. This means that we have always been able to take a hands-off approach when a claim is filed. The insurance company handles the claim and deals directly with the tenant. If they feel there is a basis for the claim, they pay it and if not they don’t. That helps us avoid a contentious relationship with the tenant. Landlord insurance is just the cost of doing business. (You’ll be surprised at how little you have to pay for your peace of mind! Even if you take additional coverage, your insurance policy will be worth it. Get an insurance quote from a trusted insurance company like Small Business Liability, and see for yourself.)
None of our tenants have ever sued us for damages. However, it’s good to know that if one ever does, our landlord insurance agency will cover the court and attorney fees and settle up with the tenant on compensation and damages. Now that we are retired, we won’t even have to leave our home on Oahu to go to short it out. I hope you also enjoy reaping the rewards of your landlord business.
ASK JOHN FOR THE BEST INSURANCE QUOTE YOU’LL GET ALL DAY!