Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Contractor's insurance - HELP!

[Deborah Behrens (debbeh]

> From: MartyR707 [at] aol.com <Marty Roberts, Two Acre Wood, Sebastopol, CA>
> What we are looking for is NAMES OF INSURANCE COMPANIES that insured your
> contractor, and a contact person and phone number.  We are passing this info
> to our contractor so he can find less expensive insurance and not charge us
> extra.  We thought insurance companies that had worked with cohousing would
> be a good source.
> ...
> Our contractor has told us that HIS insurance company wants to charge him an
> EXTRA $36,000 just to cover doing our project because we are a homeowners
> assoc. and I guess that means extra problems.  And of course the contractor
> wants to pass the cost along to us.  We are pretty set against having to pay
> this if we possibly can help it - one of the reasons to have a general
> contractor is so they carry the liability insurance, right?  It is seeming
> ludicrous to me for us to pay it.

Wonderland told me that they have used this local company for 
insuring all their projects in Colorado:

        Brown Raynor 
        5575 DTC Parkway #330
        Englewood CO 80111
        (303) 771-2509
        (303) 771-3110 Fx
        Stan Berger

So this company has a lot of cohousing construction experience.
And Stan said that the reason they've insured so many Colo cohousing
projects is that they've worked with Wonderland for a long time, 
long before cohousing, if you can imagine.  It helps when the insurance 
company has a track record with the builder and knows that the builder 
does quality work - less likely to cause law suits.

I talked to Stan Berger and he said the problem with California is that
there are too many law suits, especially with Home owners assns.
So of course they're going to charge huge amounts.

Regards the not wishing the costs to be passed on to the group, 
IMO it's just business that the contractor must pass on their costs
for working on a particular project to that project.  Yes, it's the 
contractors responsibility to pay for the insurance, but it and every 
other expense of working on the project gets added on to the cost
in some way or another - as a direct or indirect cost.  
It's distressing, but there is no free lunch.

Chuck and Katie must know more about the problem with construction
lawsuits, being in CA, and in the business.  Maybe they know some
creative ways to get around it legally?

Anyone out there have any first hand info about construction lawsuits in CA?

(I have Stan's permission to pass his company's name to the whole list.)

Good luck ... 

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 +-----------------ooO-(_)-Ooo---------------------------+
 |  Debbie Behrens                  debbeh [at] auto-trol.com |
 |  Highline Crossing CoHousing          W (303)252-2215 |
 |   1611 W. Canal Ct Littleton CO 80120 Fx(303)252-2249 |
 |  Rocky Mountain Cohousing Assn        H (303)797-7779 |
 +-------------------------------------------------------+
 |     All opinions expressed are mine, and do not       |
 |         necessarily reflect the opinions of           |
 |        Highline Crossing or RMCA in general.          |
 +-------------------------------------------------------+