Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: insurance

[Rob Sandelin (robsan]

We have state farm condominium insurance. We pay $490 a year for a 
million dollars of liability insurance which covers our playground, all 
the road and other common areas including the greenbelt.  We have 
replacement insurance for any common structure (commonhouse) at 
$56,000.  Since we are about to start building our commonhouse, this is 
OK. We will buy construction insurance when construction starts ($90) 
and then when the building is past final inspection we will up our 
insurance replacement cost on our policy to meet the actual replacement 
cost of the commonhouse ($120,000) which will raise our rates an 
estimated $90 a year. (Estimate is from a year ago so may be light).

We are not covered for earthquakes, volcanoes, floods and other 
miscellaneous stuff like nuclear attack, war, governmental seizure etc. 
 We are covered for accident and fire.  There is a lot a language in 
the policy about negligence which seems to be pretty standard stuff.  
One advice our agent gave us was to make an annual inspection of any 
playground gear and write down the date on which such inspection took 
place in a log or minutes.  I would guess that non-inspection of 
community owned playground gear is a negligence situation.

Our insurance rates  actually went down, when we incorporated as a 
condo.  We originally used to pay $540 a year for liability insurance 
on the cooperatively owned property.  We have never shopped around for 
insurance so I would be interested in hearing about what other groups 
pay.  When we get our commonhouse built we might decide to shop around 
for other insurance.  Our state farm agent has been a good contact for 
us so far, answered all our questions and was the one to suggest the 
change to condo insurance to reduce our rates.  We had an insurance 
review a year ago or so and he found all our coverage to be adequate, 
made no noise about trying to sell us more insurance which is kind of 
what we expected him to do.

Homeowners carry their own insurance which is a requirement of the 
Declarations.  I could ask around who has what company, and what they 
pay, but it would probably not be very similar.  I would bet that out 
of 11 houses we have 10 different insurance companies.

We have had no problems at all getting title insurance for units, which 
was a relief given that we were the first air space condo in the state. 
 Our attorney ran the declarations for review past Chicago title before 
finishing them to be sure it would be OK.

Rob Sandelin
Sharingwood.