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Real Estate Insurance Programs

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While some insurance policies are fundamental, others address the unique risks of each real estate asset class. Brown & Brown works closely with you to help align your coverage to your specific property and uses.

Core Insurance Coverages for All Real Estate Properties

These coverages form the foundation of any real estate insurance program:

  • Commercial property insurance: Assists with costs to repair or rebuild your property if it is damaged or destroyed by fire or other covered perils.
  • General liability insurance: Helps protect against third-party claims of bodily injury or property damage (such as a slip-and-fall lawsuit).
  • Commercial umbrella/excess liability insurance: Provides an extra layer of liability protection on top of your general liability policy. It kicks in when the limits of your primary policy are exhausted by a large claim.
  • Business income (business interruption) insurance: Replaces lost income and covers ongoing operating expenses if your property is temporarily uninhabitable due to a covered loss.

Specialized Insurance Considerations by Real Estate Asset Class

You also need to plan for risks that are specific to the type of property you own or manage. Here are some examples:

Multifamily Real Estate Insurance

  • Habitational-specific policies: Insurers often have specialized policies for apartment buildings that bundle property and liability coverage and may include extensions for risks like wrongful eviction or tenant discrimination.
  • Building ordinance coverage: If a building is significantly damaged, local building codes may require you to upgrade the undamaged portions to current standards. This extension helps cover those extra costs. 

Community Association Insurance

  • Directors and officers (D&O) insurance: This helps protect board members from personal financial loss if they are sued for alleged wrongful acts while managing the association.
  • Fidelity/crime insurance: Associations purchase this to cover losses resulting from theft or fraud committed by board members, employees, or property managers who have access to the association’s funds.
  • Building ordinance coverage: Similar to multifamily, this is important for older condominium buildings that require expensive upgrades after a loss. 

Commercial Real Estate Insurance

  • Tenant discrimination insurance: This coverage helps protect the building owner from claims that they unfairly denied a lease to a potential tenant based on their protected class.
  • Loss of rent coverage: This form of business income insurance, tailored to commercial leases, can help protect your balance sheet during the long periods it can take to find a new commercial tenant.

Retail Real Estate Insurance 

  • Parking lot and common area liability: Your general liability policy needs adequate limits and scope to cover the high-traffic, high-risk areas unique to retail centers.
  • Business income with co-tenancy endorsement: Some policies can be modified to provide coverage if you lose rental income because a co-tenancy clause was triggered by an anchor tenant leaving.

Hospitality Real Estate Insurance

  • Liquor liability insurance: General liability policies almost always exclude claims arising from the service of alcoholic beverages, so this is a must-have if you serve alcohol.
  • Guest property coverage: If someone steals a guest's property from their room or the hotel's safe, this protection helps reimburse the loss.
  • Food contamination insurance: This covers a scenario where a foodborne illness outbreak forces you to close your restaurant, dispose of contaminated food, and clean your facilities.

Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) Insurance

  • Public company D&O insurance: This highly specialized policy helps protect the REIT's directors and officers from lawsuits brought by shareholders related to stock performance, financial reporting, and corporate governance.
  • Cybersecurity insurance: This coverage helps a REIT recover from data breaches and system failures.
  • Portfolio-wide policies: REITs often purchase “blanket” policies that cover their entire portfolio of properties, which can be more efficient and cost-effective than insuring each property individually.

Why Real Estate Businesses Choose Brown & Brown for Insurance Program Design

We work closely with you to help build an insurance program that aligns with your risk profile and financial objectives. Our market relationships and deep bench of specialists allow us to find solutions for complex and hard-to-place risks.

Brown & Brown collaborates with you to explore creative approaches to risk financing, because traditional insurance isn’t always the only or best answer. For unique risks or situations where coverage is difficult to secure, we can help you evaluate alternative solutions, such as:

  • Captives
  • Risk Retention Groups
  • Loss Portfolio Transfers
  • Self-Insurance
  • Parametric Insurance

With a multi-billion-dollar portfolio of construction insurance options, including builder's risk, OCIPs, and CCIPs, we can also provide practical guidance for development and renovation projects.

Our support extends across the entire lifecycle of your real estate investment — from acquisition and development to management, optimization, and eventual sale.

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Brown & Brown helps real estate owners, investors, and associations design comprehensive insurance programs tailored to their properties and financial goals. Our specialists can review your current coverage, identify improvement opportunities, and provide strategies that support your portfolio’s long-term growth and protection.

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