The Ultimate Guide to Property Insurance on Rental Properties

If you’re looking to learn more about property insurance on rental properties, then check out our Ultimate Guide to Property Insurance on Rental Properties.

It is important to estimate property insurance when analyzing deals you’re considering buying. It is one of the primary inputs on The World’s Greatest Real Estate Deal Analysis Spreadsheets™ for you to enter when you start your deal analysis. You can download the spreadsheet for free.

You typically get the estimated property insurance value from your insurance agent.

Often you get a general estimate of what insurance might be a specific property that is similar to ones you’re considering buying. This can be done by getting a single quote on an actual property like what you’re looking at early in your search.

You then use that quote adjusting it up and down a little based on price of the property you’re analyzing to get a really rough estimate of what insurance might be on that property you’re analyzing.

However, before you make an offer… or for some more experienced investors… within the due diligence period that covers being able to get insurance on the property, you call your insurance agent to get an updated, specific insurance quote for the property you’re going to buy to make sure the numbers are still reasonable and you can get insurance on the property.

Minimize Property Insurance to Improve Cash Flow on Rental Properties

While the following video is not exclusively about minimizing property insurance costs, it does discuss ideas on how to overall improve cash flow.

Property Insurance for Rental Properties

The following is a full video I did on my best tips for insurance on rental properties.

Calculating Operating Expenses

Knowing your property insurance costs on a rental property is critical to calculate Operating Expenses.

Annual Operating Expenses

Operating Expenses are all the expenses of operating the property except vacancy and financing of the property.

For Typical 25% Down Payment Gainesville, Florida Rental Property we used the following:

• Property Taxes - These are the property taxes paid for the property. For Typical 25% Down Payment Gainesville, Florida Rental Property, we've estimated they are $0 per year.
• Property Insurance - This is the insurance policy to cover the property from perils like fires and liability from injuries on the property. Your specific policy will define what hazards you're covered for. This policy typically does not cover the personal property of tenants; they should get their own renter's insurance policy to cover that. For Typical 25% Down Payment Gainesville, Florida Rental Property, we've estimated the cost of this insurance policy to be $4,007.22 per year.
• Homeowner's Association Fees - This is usually the cost for the homeowner's association (HOA) where the property is located. What the HOA coverages varies widely between different HOAs so be sure to check with the HOA to find out what is included for your HOA fee. For Typical 25% Down Payment Gainesville, Florida Rental Property, we've estimated the cost of the homeowner's association fees to be $0 per year.
• Landlord-Paid Utilities - With many single family homes... and to a slightly lesser extend... duplexes, triplexes adn fourplexes... the tenants all pay individually metered utilities. However, in some cases... especially for larger multi-family properties... the landlord is responsbile for some shared (or in some cases... all) utilities. This is just for the utilities that the landlord is responsbile for paying. Tenant-paid utilities should not be included here. It is not uncommon to have this be equal to zero especially for smaller properties. For Typical 25% Down Payment Gainesville, Florida Rental Property, we've estimated the cost of the landlord-paid utilities to be $0 per year.
• Other Expenses - Sometimes a property will have an extra expenses associated with it. Some examples might include lawn service, snow removal, common area cleaning, etc. For smaller properties, it is not uncommon to have these extra expenses be equal to zero. For Typical 25% Down Payment Gainesville, Florida Rental Property, we've estimated the annual cost of these extra expenses to be:
• Other Expenses 1: $0
• Other Expenses 2: $0
• Maintenance - With many properties... especially residential properties... the landlord will be responsible for maintaining the properties and should set aside money to pay for on-going maintenance. For Typical 25% Down Payment Gainesville, Florida Rental Property, we've estimated the cost of maintenance, on average, to be $2,688.84 per year.
• There is some debate over whether you should include some or all of the Capital Expenses in the Operating Expenses or if they should be capital improvements to the property and not including in Operating Expenses. You can choose to include them by increasing the maintenance percentage or choose to include them elsewhere by excluding them from Maintenance.
• Property Management - With most properties, there will be an expense to managing the properties either in the form a professional property management fee or the... much lower hard costs... of managing the property yourself. For Typical 25% Down Payment Gainesville, Florida Rental Property, we've estimated the cost of property management to be 0% of the rent or $0 per year.

If we add up all of these expenses for Typical 25% Down Payment Gainesville, Florida Rental Property, we're estimating the Annual Operating Expenses to be $10,097.44.

Annual Operating Expenses

And, you’ll need the Operating Expenses to calculate Cash on Cash Return on Investment, Cap Rate and more.

Primary Input

Property Insurance Primary is considered a primary input in the Hierarchy of Real Estate Metrics.

It is used to directly calculate Operating Expenses Secondary.