Property Management Insurance FAQ
These are the questions that come up before a coverage conversation gets specific about your own exposure, about how this agency works, and about what actually happens between a first call and a bound program. Segment-specific questions live on the four coverage pages, and each market has its own set on its location page.
Your Own Coverage
Q: Do property managers need their own insurance, or does the owner’s policy cover us?
You need your own. The owner’s policy insures the building and the conditions in it. Your exposure is the decisions you make about that building the vendor you approved, the inspection you scheduled, the applicant you screened, the certificate you accepted, the reserve study you relied on. Those are professional liability allegations, and an owner’s general liability policy is not built to answer them. Being named an additional insured on it helps with premises claims and does nothing for the rest.
Q: What is the difference between errors and omissions and general liability?
General liability responds to bodily injury and property damage arising out of premises and operations somebody slipped, something got damaged. Errors and omissions responds to allegations that a professional service was performed negligently you failed to maintain, failed to disclose, failed to enforce, failed to place coverage the agreement required. A single incident often produces both allegations in the same complaint, which is why the two policies need to be built to work together rather than bought separately.
Q: I am a one-person management company. Is this overkill?
No, and the exposure is arguably worse. A small firm has the same statutory obligations, the same management agreements, and the same fair housing and security deposit rules as a large one, without a risk manager reading the contracts. The program is smaller. The reasons for having it are identical.
Q: My management agreement lists insurance requirements. Is that enough to go on?
It is the starting point and it is not enough. Agreements routinely require coverage in terms that do not map cleanly onto policy language naming requirements that a carrier will not endorse as written, notice-of-cancellation provisions that no longer exist in the market, or coverage described by a name that has not been a standard form in years. Bring the agreement. Reading it against the actual policy forms is most of what a coverage review is.
Q: Do I need coverage in every county where I manage property?
You need one program whose territory covers everywhere you operate, not a separate policy per county. What changes county to county is the exposure profile building age, flood mapping, local enforcement, and the specific statutes that apply. A program written for a Manhattan portfolio and extended to Putnam County without a second look tends to be over-built in one direction and short in another.
Working With This Agency
Q: Are you an insurance agency or a lead generation site?
A licensed New York insurance agency. Coverage is placed by a licensed producer here, not sold on to somebody else. See the licensing disclosure in the footer.
Q: Do you only write property management insurance?
That is the focus, and it is deliberate. A generalist agency writes a property manager’s program the way it writes a contractor’s, and the parts that matter in this vertical additional insured mechanics, certificate management, the interaction between a master policy and a manager’s errors and omissions are exactly the parts that get handled generically.
Q: Can you work alongside the broker I already have?
Sometimes, and it depends on what you want. If the question is whether your current program holds up, a coverage review answers that without moving anything. If lines end up moving, a broker of record letter is how that happens, and we will tell you plainly when a line is better left where it is.
Q: What size portfolio do you work with?
Both ends. A manager with a handful of buildings and a firm managing several hundred units have different programs and the same underlying question: does what you have match what you have agreed to carry. There is no minimum.
Q: Do you handle certificates of insurance?
Yes, both directions issuing certificates your clients, lenders, and boards request, and reviewing the vendor certificates coming into your office. The second one is where claims get lost. A vendor certificate that lapsed eight months ago is functionally an uninsured contractor working on a property you manage.
The Process
Q: What actually happens in a coverage review?
You send the management agreements, the current declarations pages, and the vendor certificate log. We read them against each other and come back with a list of where the program does not line up with the obligations missing endorsements, additional insured status that dropped off, coverage the agreement requires that the policy does not include, and anything on the program that is being paid for twice.
Q: How long does it take?
A review of a straightforward portfolio is usually a week from receiving complete documents. Community association books take longer, because each association has its own master policy and its own management agreement and they are rarely consistent with one another.
Q: Is there any obligation?
No. A review that concludes your current program is sound is a useful outcome and it happens regularly. Some of the most useful reviews end with a one-line recommendation to add an endorsement at the next renewal and nothing else.
Q: When should I start, relative to my renewal?
Ninety days out. Sixty is workable. Thirty means whatever is found gets fixed next year, because the market will not rewrite a habitational or community association program in three weeks. The one thing that never works is starting after the renewal quote arrives and treating it as a price negotiation.
Q: What happens if I have a claim?
Report it immediately, even if you think it is not covered and even if you think it is somebody else’s policy. Late notice is a coverage defense and it is the easiest one for a carrier to win. Sorting out which policy responds is our job, and it happens faster when the notice went in on day one rather than after the demand letter arrived.
Still Have a Question?
If yours is not here, it is probably the interesting one. Ask it.
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