I am a Landlord, Do I need to require tenant insurance?

Congrats you are on the right path to passive income and generational wealth. You are buying rentals and trying to manage your own portfolio since you are just starting out.

You found the home you ran the numbers you bought the house and now it is rented.

When you bought the house you found a trusty insurance agent to help you find a landlord policy for the best price for your new rental.

Securing the landlord policy means signing the insurance policy. And signing off on insurance requirements from your carrier.

One of those requirements on most likely every carrier out there is “you require the tenants to carry tenant insurance”.

What does this mean?

You require tenants to carry their own tenant insurance with liability (this will protect your insurance in case their are negligent in your property). Their insurance will become the first line of defense.

You want them to also carry at least $300,000 in liability. You want to make sure you or your business is named as additioally insured and that you require a paid in full receipt (you would be surprised at how many of these cancel after one month).

Make this part of your lease. Require the declarations page with you listed as an additional insured and a paid in full receipt as well as the $300,000 minimum liability.

How Can I find out who my homeowners insurance is through?

Its ok, you arent the only one!

A lot of times people buy their first home and take a recommendation from the realtor or from their lender and cannot remember what company they have their home insurance through!

It is paperless and it is escrowed so you havent seen the documents in ages and you are not even sure who has it! Do you have an agent? And who is the carrier?

Homeowners insurance is billed typically to the mortgage, then paid as a dispersement form your escrow account. So every month when you pay your mortgage you pay into your escrow account, iinterest and pricipal. Your escrow collects enough to pay your taxes and insurance every year.

Your escrow account can fluctuate based on the taxes and insurance fluctuating. Every year around the time you purchased the home the mortgage does an escrow analysis, where they reevaluate if they need to take more or less money from you (adjusting the mortgage payments) based on changes in your taxes and insurance.

So since your escrow gets the bill from the insurance carrier directly and pays it; that is where we can find out who your insurance carrier is.

You can call you mortgage company to ask who they pay the insurance bill to. Once they give you the name of the carrier you can call the carrier and attempt to get information about your policy (declarations page) with the policy number provided by the mortgage company.

Another way that sometimes helps us locate your current insurance carrier or agent is; mycoverageinfo.com. This is a website that is subscribed to by a lot of insurance and mortgage carriers to have a “Catch-all” to get insurance information updated to the mortgagee. So, you can find out who the carrier is from this site by answer a few personal questions about you and your mortgage.

This site doe not always work because the mortgagee would have to be the one that utilizes this service and it is not always the case that they do. But it is a great help when it works seamlessly attaching your mortgage info to your insurance carrier or agent.

Typically most people issue their home insurance when they first buy their home and unless they need to use the insurance…they rarely think of it again. Years go by and we arent sure who is the agent or carrier so this is a helpful way to figure out who you have as an agent or carrier for your home!