How Additional Insured Can Help Sacramento Landlords

At Sacramento Delta, we are property management experts who know a lot about insurance. But when it comes to insurance matters, we want you to hear directly from an expert in insurance. So, we’ve invited Kurt Bullock with Bullock Insurance to talk to us about what it means to add your property manager as an additional insured to your policy. It can be difficult for a lot of our new clients to understand, especially if they’ve never heard of it before. 

Liability Coverage for Owners and Property Managers

If you have an income property and you hire a property manager, you’ll usually end up signing a management agreement. In that management agreement, there is usually an indemnity clause. When you add your property management company to your landlord policy as an additional insured, you’re protecting everyone who deals with the property and the tenants. 

For example, if a tenant had a party and a guest was injured and there was a lawsuit, both the landlord and the property owner would be named in the lawsuit. So, when that lawsuit gets turned over to your insurance company for representation, you want all parties to be protected from liability. This is called premises liability. A few carriers will include this for you without any charge, and it’s the best way to protect your property. 

Property owners have a laundry list of policies available to them when they’re buying insurance to protect their investment property. As property managers, we provide our owners with eviction protection. We don’t cover the loss of rent because there’s an insurance rider for that. When you have lost rents, you can recover that money through your policy. 

Serving Tenants Better as an Additional Insured 

During the fires in Paradise and the floods in Houston, we also found out that property managers who were listed as an additional insured on the owners’ policies were able to get help for their tenants faster. We have a lot of investors who don’t live in California, and getting to the site of a disaster right away is impossible. When the property manager is an additional insured, we can act on your behalf immediately. That’s an added benefit that we didn’t know existed until we saw our fellow NARPM members go through it. It’s another good reason to add your property manager as an additional insured. 

Additional Insured versus Additional Interest

Sometimes, a landlord insurance policy will add a property management company as an additional interest. That is different than additional insured. They kind of sound the same but additional insured means the property manager is covered under the liability section of the policy. Additional interest simply means that when the policy experiences a change, such as a renewal or cancelation notice, the property manager will get a copy of that notice. It does not offer any liability protection at all. There is no protection when a management company is named as additional interest. It’s a huge difference, and you want to make sure you’re adding the company as an additional insured. 

If you have any questions about this, please reach out to us at Sacramento Delta Property Management, and we’d be happy to share more information.