Homeowner's Insurance for Coop During Renovation?
Can anyone recommend good homeowner’s insurance that will provide coverage for a coop apartment while we renovate? The apartment is currently vacant. Any estimates about cost would also be much appreciated. Thanks!
Can anyone recommend good homeowner’s insurance that will provide coverage for a coop apartment while we renovate? The apartment is currently vacant. Any estimates about cost would also be much appreciated.
Thanks!
Homeowners insurance is generally inapplicable to construction and will not cover you (at least, as here, where the building is unoccupied). Don’t know if they write in Brooklyn, but I have Zurich for a weekend house rebuild. There are far more opportunities for liabilities/damages/fire/falls/etc. during construction, so don’t skimp out on this, at least the liability portion. But the insurance is not cheap.
Smokychimp, do you have any recommendations of who to contact for such a policy?
Thanks in advance.
Homeowner’s insurance is not an appropriate insurance to cover your construction project. What you need is a project-specific general liability policy, with the coop named as an additional insured. If your coop is at all on the ball they will have guidelines on the liability amount and the parties needed to be additional insureds.
A $1 million general liability insurance policy for a construction project costs a little less than $400.
apt, below is his info.
Allstate Insurance Company – Vladimir Zamsky
35 42 Union St
Flushing, NY 11354
(718) 359-5347
Never met him in person and have done everything over the phone. Recommended him to over 20 people in my co-op. Nothing but good experience with him.
Kensigntonian, would you mind passing along your contact at allstate?
Thanks to everyone for the helpful information.
Jim, thanks. Makes sense. I guess it’s worth it to get that kind of insurance if you’re doing a huge reno job or a gut of a house but for a smaller scale co-op apt. projects, I don’t see it being worthwhile. Unless it’s super cheap insurance, then maybe.
justmoved, I can see how dealing with Allstate on such a big claim can be a nightmare. After all, all insurance companies love giving out insurance but when it comes to paying claims, every one looks for excuses not to pay up. They are in the business of that.
For what it’s worth, I have a couple of instances dealing with Allstate co-op insurance and they were very positive but they were for small claims (leak from outside inside the apartment and the wall needed to be retouched/spackled and repainted). The adjuster came, issued about $400 bucks and the work actually ended up being cheaper. They paid with no problems.
No snarkiness at all. I had never heard of it before I met Chuck a couple of years ago.
If something happens within the construction site that causes damage to the site, let’s say a fire or a flood, the contractor’s insurance will cover only what was in place before the work was begun. It’s safe to assume that the value of the new work will exceed that of what was there before. Who covers the value of the work that was completed to date? No one, unless you have course of construction coverage. Course of Construction will increase its value as the construction progresses, so if you’re only 25% done with the project, then you’d get 25% of the project cost if something were to happen, and it would progress linearly from there.
This sounds like an insurance commercial, and I am definitely not an insurance salesman. I know only as much about it as I have discussed with Chuck relative to specific projects I have done work on. If you really want to get better specifics, you should feel free to call or email (cchernick@achernick.com) him directly. He’s a real nice guy and would be happy to explain it all better than I can.
don’t have much to add on the during construction insurance but once you are inside your apartment and gte regular co-op insurance make sure that the building property limit (different from personal property) is roughly the cost of a gut renovation. usually it is set a lot lower and we found out the hard way that in co-ops (esp after an extensive renovation) the building insurance doesn’t pay anything in the apt. we had allstate and paid $320 a year, had 100k personal property but only 30k in building property which turned out way too little – it was a complete nightmare as we had to replace all our (new) wooden floors + subfloors etc and our mistake cost us a good 15k out of pocket. allstate was a nightmare to deal with as well so i would never ever recommend them.
“is something that covers the work as it is being performed”
OK, this is confusing. Why does this need insurance? If the work is not up to par, don’t pay the contractor. If the work is done wrong, his/her insurance will cover the mess. I don’t get why you would need a “Course of Construction” policy.
Jim, not trying to be snarky or anything. I just never heard of such thing so please elaborate when you have a chance because I would like to know for the future.