Gloria Kelley
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Show NotesAPIA is an investor friendly insurance company owned and operated by Gloria Kelley in Castroville, TX. Gloria has over 42 years experience in the insurance industry and services a niche market-unoccupied, vacant, or “distressed” properties. She got her start providing insurance for large financial institution’s Real Estate Owned (REO) portfolios and has been employed by various large insurance companies over the course of her career. She has experienced all types of claims in her ever-growing knowledge in the insurance world.
Gloria shared some great tips and gotchas that all real estate investors need to be aware of when it comes to insuring vacant houses. As investors, we have a lot going on and can sometimes make decisions without knowing all the facts.
I’m willing to bet that 90% of real estate investors don’t properly insure their investment properties.
In this episode we talk about the importance of understanding insurance policy vacancy clauses. This is a super important clause because it can basically allow insurance companies to deny claims.
Another important topic we cover is what happens when you under insure a property. I know most investors do this as well. It’s important to understand the ramifications when you don’t put a proper insured value on your vacant real estate investments.
They currently service investors all over the U.S. We build strong relationships with clients because of our customer service, competitive pricing, responsiveness, and flexibility to meet the unique demands of investors. They offer the investor the opportunity to pay insurance in arrears. This is especially important since you know investors are cash /cash flow focused. Most insurance providers require insurance 3 months in advance and you probably won’t get a refund of the premium if you do not use it all. With them you pay for what you use after the fact-not beforehand.
Their policies are underwritten by Lloyd’s of London.
Call Gloria at (877) 752-2742 if you have any questions about vacant property insurance for real estate investors.
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Episode TranscriptionWelcome to The Flipping Junkie Podcast. My name is Danny Johnson former software developer turned house flipper flipping hundreds of houses. Each week we bring you interview, strategy, stories and motivation to help you get started flipping houses and on your way to becoming your own boss and achieving financial freedom. Thanks for spending time with me today. Now let’s get to it.
Danny Johnson: Welcome back. Thanks for listening to The Flipping Junkie Podcast. I really appreciate it.
Today we’ve got Gloria Kelley from APIA Insurance joining me on the episode. We’re covering The Flipping Junkie series starting with motivation, mindset, all that kind of good stuff up through team building, all the right people on your team, finding the right realtor, all the right agents, the right closers, wholesalers to work with, all that kind of stuff for your team to work with as you start flipping houses and investing in real estate. Today we’re going to be covering the topic of insurance. I think a lot of investors, even experienced investors sometimes, sort of don’t do their homework and know exactly what kind of policies they’ve got, what their policies cover and all that kind of stuff. It’s very important because if something does happen to one of these houses, you could be up a creek without a paddle. So we’re going to cover some of that stuff today. Gloria Kelley in APIA had been doing insurance for vacant houses and stuff like that for a long time, so a lot of experience there and we’ll get into all the good details. Now APIA is an investor-friendly insurance company owned and operated by Gloria Kelley in Cacharel Texas. It’s not far from us and San Antonio it’s southwest of San Antionio. Gloria, she’s going over 42 years of experience in the insurance industry and service as a niche market unoccupied vacant or distressed properties. So that’s their niche, that’s what they deal with, these distressed houses that we invest in. She got to start providing insurance for large financial institutions, REO portfolios and has been employed by various large insurance companies over the course of her career. She has experienced all types of claims in her ever growing knowledge in the insurance world and they currently service investors all over the US. So you don’t have to be in San Antonio Texas. You can be anywhere in the US and they build strong relationships clients because of their customer service, competitive pricing, responsiveness which I can attest for all those things, and flexibility to meet the unique demands of investors. They offer investors opportunity to pay insurance in arrears and it’s especially important since you know investors are cash, cash flow focused. Most insurance providers require insurance three months in advance and you probably won’t get a refund of the premium if you don’t use it all. That’s in some cases for other insurance companies and how they work. It’s really nice how they have it set up and we’ll talk about that in the interview. Their policies are underwritten by Lloyd’s of London, so a good quality insurance. I can’t wait to get into that episode with her. A word from our sponsors which is us with our software that we have for real investors with REIMobile which is our CRM system to keep track of your leads, follow ups, all that kind of stuff for your house flips. We just recently got out of beta so we’re now live. You can go to reimobile.com and check out what we offer there and sign up for that. If you have any questions about it, about REIMobile or anything with the real estate investor websites and leadpropeller.com, you can call us at 210-999-5187 and somebody in my office will answer that call and answer any questions that you have regarding our systems. So be sure to check this out. Now we’ll just ahead and get into this interview and cover everything there is know about insurance for real estate investors.
Danny Johnson: Hello Gloria, are you there?
Gloria Kelley: Yes I am.
Danny Johnson: Hi Gloria. Thanks for being on the show.
Gloria Kelley: You’re very welcome Danny. I’m excited to be talking about insurance with people.
Danny Johnson: Great. I’m really glad that we got to talking again and for you willing to be on the show because this fits really well within the series that we’re doing in building a team and I think when people talk about building a team for real estate investing, for some reason, insurance is always left out even though that’s a really big important piece to any real estate investors business.
Gloria Kelley: It’s a very pertinent part of it because insurance is to keep you from financial disaster. That is the entire reason you purchase it. So if you have invested money, in the event of a loss, you need to be compensated for the money that you’ve spent, build it back to where you were before.
Danny Johnson: Right.
Gloria Kelley: In insurance, I have always taken it on myself as I understand it. I’ve been in it 42 year, so I truly understand that and I want my clients to understand it to a point where it’s their money they’re spending. It is their insurance policy and even though it can be quite confusing, there are some basics that I think are vitally important because what I talk about today you can turn around and use it in your own personal life – for your auto in your homeowner’s policy, so I love to try to help people understand their insurance better.
Danny Johnson: It’s great. Yeah, that’ll be awesome. So could you give us a little bit of background how you got into insurance and got into specifically handling insurance for distressed properties?
Gloria Kelley: Sure. I would gladly tell you that. I’ve been in insurance 42 years. I started with the standard markets like Hartford. I worked for Hartford six years. I worked for several large companies for years and I handle the last few years that I was in standard insurance – standard meaning that I handled everything. I have had my hands on everything. I have done homeowner, I’ve done personal auto, for years I’ve done commercial – commercial meaning property coverage, liability umbrella, Worker’s Compensation, commercial auto. I have a very good background in insurance. I’ve been doing the investor business for I guess now about 21-22 years. And the reason that I was so interested in this, I was able to be very good at one, not so much very good, but I could have detailed interest in it instead of having a little knowledge about it. So when I first started doing this, I was working with financial institutions and I was insuring repossessed properties for banks those that were going into foreclosure called forced place and I had a really large bank several years ago that had more than 500 properties. Once they started selling these off to different clients and investors, those investors did not get insurance for vacant distressed property because most of your standard markets have no interest in writing this. And the bank came back to me and they asked if I would please offer it to their investors and I did and since then I write very few banks and I absolutely love working with investors. It’s been a wonderful trip for me working with investors.
Danny Johnson: Well I say you definitely fill that void there was where it was difficult for investors to get insurance for these vacant distressed properties. Do you know how I actually found you years ago – I was listening to something by Steve Cook, do you remember Steve Cook?
Gloria Kelley: I certainly do, out at Baltimore.
Danny Johnson: Out at Baltimore right. I think he had mentioned that he was on a flight or something and met you or some people in your office, maybe Tracy or somebody on a plane ride. I think he and he was talking about it so that you guys were in Texas in Castroville and I was like, well that’s just down the street from me so I thought that that was pretty interesting.
Gloria Kelley: It is especially since we are we have clients all over the US. We even have some international clients now. So it is very interesting that just from hearing us talk about our interests, he was he mentioned that and see I don’t remember who it was that he had been introduced to, but I do remember for quite some time, he would talk about us any time he was doing a seminar.
Danny Johnson: Yeah. He brought you some good business from that.
Gloria Kelley: Absolutely.
Danny Johnson: Alright. Well let’s get started here in the difference – maybe we can start with maybe the difference in your policies versus standard homeowner policies.
Gloria Kelley: Okay. That is a great place to start. If you have a home, you will purchase what is called a homeowner’s policy. Homeowner means exactly that, not only do you own it you live in it. The homeowner policy is only available to a person who lives in the home that they are buying. It is when you talk about the properties that we’re insuring, these are more rental properties or rehab properties. They will never be able to be written on a homeowner policy. I tell our clients all the time a homeowner policy is the most wonderful policy you will ever purchase. The coverage on it is extremely broad. It provides not only your home coverage, but it also provides extra little things like if you were to have a loss that would make you have to leave your home for any length of time it covers to provide you for rental any place you would have to go rent. It has the liability. It is just a very poor coverage. If you go to someone’s house and accidentally knock over a lamp, it will be covered under your homeowner’s policy as damage to others. It’s very broad. Not only is it very broad, it is the least expensive policy that you’re ever going to be able to purchase. It was set in that manner so that everybody that owns a home will have very good coverage. When you have the ability to invest in other properties and you are able to have investment properties, the coverage is not near as broad. There are quite a few limitations on that, so when I have anyone calling and wanting to have a homeowner policy on a property that’s going to be rental, I try to take the time to explain to them there is no homeowner’s policy for any of your rental or rehab. It is strictly a policy that is very basic but not broad and I hope that your people being involved with the building if anything they will understand that their coverage is very different.
Danny Johnson: So what are some examples of certain situations where let’s say an investor did have a house that was vacant they were doing some work on and some kind of real world situation that would happen where that would be a problem had they got a homeowner insurance on it.
Gloria Kelley: Okay and that makes us talk about something that I wanted to discuss with you. If it’s vacant your homeowner policy, every policy you purchase dealing with property any real property, any homeowner policy, your business policy on building in your business is located in it they all have a vacancy clause. The vacancy clause will stipulate how long you can be vacant prior to coverage. It will explain the policy itself. Each policy is different, but it will either take your coverage down to maybe fire and that’s all you have, you may not even have wind storm or you may not have any coverage at all. Vacancy can be a real issue on a homeowner policy. If you are going to be moving out of that house and renovating your own home, which I’ve done before and I’m sure a lot of people have done, you have to notify the insurance carrier if you’re going to be out of it and depending on how they want to handle that, I had about two different policies. I had to build buy a builder’s risk, which literally means a builder is going to be building it and then I had to have another policy that insure just the property as it said there and I could only get fire and wind storm. I could not get any other coverage on it. You can see if you move out of your home, it would cause an issue. If you bought got a vacant home and got a homeowner policy on it, you would really have issue. You would have just purchased a policy that would not cover that building at all because of the vacancy.
Danny Johnson: Yeah, because sometimes even if it has something where it specifies for however long weeks or months coverage for the vacancy, that that could extend right past from before you even know it because if it’s been vacant for a year before you owned it I think that plays into it as well doesn’t it?
Gloria Kelley: Yes it does, yes. You cannot purchase a home or a policy for a vacant property. It’s prohibited. So you would need to be very careful and making your agent understand that the property is taken and yes the homeowner is less expensive but it also carries some heavy penalty if you miss apply that ___. You either have no insurance or you are so limited on the coverage.
Danny Johnson: As another situation, what if you had a rental property that you bought and you put a policy on there that was a homeowner’s policy, what kind of real world problems could you run into with that situation?
Gloria Kelley: Well, in the homeowner’s policy it tells you exactly who can live in the house and it is either the owner of the home or a spouse or a child of the homeowner. That’s it. It specifies exactly who can live there and it will not have a renter or if it’s not listed as one of the people that can live there then you’re not going to have coverage. The coverage would be null and void.
Danny Johnson: Alright. And so if there was a policy that was not a homeowner’s policy, but just like a fire coverage for rental or vacancy, could you tell us about those.
Gloria Kelley: Yes. They also have a vacancy clause. Every policy has a vacancy clause. They have to address what will happen with the coverage in the event that you move out and didn’t tell anyone. Normally you will have again 30 days that you can have it vacant, some state 60, and then depending on what companies some will just narrow the coverage, others will tell you that coverage is null and void after the length of time of vacancy. The policy the policy that we write for clients, we work with investors strictly and with vacant homes. That’s more of our specialty, vacant or rehab or rental property. And our vacancy clause states you can be vacant forever, for whatever length of time needed. We do not have any restrictions on it. So that’s why it works very well for our rental properties because if you have a renter and I think everyone’s had this happen, they might move out and not pay you for a couple of months and you’re not aware that they vacated the premises. So if a loss occurs during that time, say a wind storm, you will have coverage in place where if you have a regular standard policy, there may not there may not be coverage.
Danny Johnson: It’s crazy too, over time, I’m sure you’ve probably heard things this before maybe not since you’re dealing with selling the insurance, but I’ve actually heard other investors in the past talk about placing a bed or a mattress and some sheets and maybe some cans of food inside of a house to make it seem like if something did happen they could say well somebody was living in there and that’s just crazy to me that they would take the chance and make that kind of effort to make it seem that somebody is in a house to cover the fact that you have a bad policy for covering it.
Gloria Kelley: Yes. And Danny there’s a good chance that there was still no coverage. I mean you can tell someone if it is unoccupied dwelling or not because most insurance carriers – the claims adjusters go out and see the premises and inspect the premises and if you don’t have any other household goods, you don’t have pots and pans and clothes hanging in the closet, they’re aware that this is just a setup to make it look like someone’s there. For are all they know, they may think it’s a squatter.
Danny Johnson: Yeah, which wouldn’t count, right?
Gloria Kelley: No, oh no. Not at all. It’s such a simple thing Danny. As long as you understand what you’re dealing with, I would rather take the chance of having coverage than not.
Danny Johnson: Oh yeah definitely. We were going to talk about insurable interest.
Gloria Kelley: Yes. Insurable interest a lot of people – and I and this is going to move right into main insured versus additional insured and mortgage ___ loss coverage. Insurable interest means that I have a financial interest in a piece of property and if it should have a loss, I will lose money and the insurance is to help me get back to where I was before. A lot of times people will go, “Well it’s my cousin’s house and he’s having a hard time getting coverage because it’s vacant so I want to put it on my policy.” That’s not going to work. Our insured does not have insurable interest. We can’t put it under Denny Johnson’s policy for your cousin Joe Moore over here because you have no interest in that house. You have no money that you have spent on that house, so the insurance policy will not respond to that. The other thing the insurable interest and we are very careful to do is however you title your property, you need to make sure that entity is named on the policy that is referred to is a “named insured.” So if you do Danny Johnson and each one of your properties like 123 Main Street is going to be an LLC but you own it 100 percent. You need Danny Johnson and then we need to list every one of your little LLCs on even though you’re 100% owner, this way you enjoy all the parts of the policy and “name insured” is the owner of the policy. You get every coverage that is available under that policy. An additional insurer, sometimes if you have a mortgage company you want to be listed as an additional insured and this will play right into the next one, additional insured is normally for liability only. The endorsements we can put on to add an additional insured, it is someone that has a liability exposure. I’ll give you an example of that in a business sense. I own the building that we are in. I own it personally, not as a business. My business rents the building from me. So in turn I have asked APIA to list me as an additional insured on the liability because if someone were injured here on the premises, there is a very good chance that I would be brought into the suit because I am the owner. Does this make sense to you that I know you?
Danny Johnson: Oh yeah.
Gloria Kelley: That’s an additional insured. An additional insured is for liability purposes only. A lot of banks will say, “I want to be added as an additional insured” and they want to be on there for the liability but they don’t own the property. There are only the mortgagee, so they’re the ones lending the money so we can do it, but it really serves no purpose for a financial institution to be listed as additional insured. Additional insured strictly as any liability exposure that might be there out of their ownership. Mortgage versus a loss payee, it just depends. Most of the time when you buy a car, the financial institution is a loss payee. It’s just terminology. Mortgagee is someone who holds the mortgage on your house. I don’t think we’ve ever heard of holding a mortgage on a car. Have you ever heard that term?
Danny Johnson: No.
Gloria Kelley: So they just have a loan on the car. So a mortgagee is the business or person you have a loan worth and they are always listed on the policy as a mortgagee. So in the event of a loss, the check will be made cheap and named insured and we spoke about that earlier, that’s the policy owner and to the mortgage company because the mortgage has financial interest on it. You will have to get both signatures to cash the check that notifies the mortgage company that your house is on a loss. They’ve made put stipulations on it depending on the contract you have with the mortgage. They may want to see the end results of repairs prior to signing off on the check and then again the loss payee we see that primarily when it’s a car loan.
Danny Johnson: So basically as an investor, if our company Joe Blow LLC bought a house as an investment, the name insured would be Joe Blow LLC and if you got a loan from a private lender, Susie Lender, then that would be the mortgagee on the policy.
Gloria Kelley: That is correct.
Danny Johnson: Okay or if this is hard money or something it would be that hard money company that would be the mortgagee. What’s the next thing that you want to discuss?
Gloria Kelley: Well talked about vacancy earlier and the next two things I want to discuss, I’m going to do real briefly because later on hopefully maybe you’ll have me do another uncast with you, these can get really sticky but I want to just give you a brief explanation and everything we learn is by route. We learn that ABCs, we learn 1 + 1 = 2 and I have found that in insurance, it’s the same way. I have to go over and go over and go over certain things. These two issues usually cause an issue. It’s called the actual cash value and in the insurance industry is called AVC, actual cash value, are replacement cost value and that’s called RCV. Actual cash value is determined by what it would cost you to replace the building today then it would be depreciated by the age of their property. That’s my favorite one, that appreciates the most. If I have it have a ___ that is 15-year roof and it’s been on for five years, for me to replace it, I would have to buy a brand new roof and you can have the brand new roof, but we’re only going to pay you on the actual existence of it. You only have 10 years left on the life, so it will be appreciated by the size of year term. Now I cannot tell you the depreciation percentage of each item. Everything is different. Look, what I want you to know actual cash value means whenever you have a loss, it will be in today’s replacement, but it will be depreciated by the age and use of that house or that portion of the house. Replacement cost means that you will insure it too and you will insure the value that it would cost you to replace it today. So if my roof, when I bought it was $15,000 and then 10 years later it’s going to be $25,000 well I have to insure to make sure that I have the $25,000 dollar roof on my house today and that is replacement cost. You will get replacement cost, but the real trick of replacement cost is they mean it. You have to replace whatever was damaged. You can’t say, “Well never mind. I’m just going to take the money and leave.” You have to replace it. You will first be paid actual cash value with the depreciated value. Once you repair the damage, then you will receive the additional funds for replacement cost.
Danny Johnson: Interesting and so obviously they would be more expensive as well right for replacement costs?
Gloria Kelley: Absolutely. If you’re going to insure it for a half hour you it will cost you more. Yes.
Danny Johnson: With policies, do you specify whether it’s going to be the actual cash value or the replacement cash value or is that more of based on the amount that you’re insuring for?
Gloria Kelley: Most standard policies will have to designate whether it’s replacement cost or whether it’s an actual cash value. The policy that we write on a replacement cost value, that’s why we put that endorsement on, in the endorsement it says, “If you have insured it to replacement cost, you get replacement cost. If you fall below what it would cost to replace the house, you automatically get actual cash value.”
Danny Johnson: Okay. So that’s basically what answer the question of what happens if I under insure an investment property and had a loss. How does the insurance handle a situation that? Let’s say the house was maybe replacement value of $150,000 but you all insured it for $100,000, how did it how was it handled if something were to happen?
Gloria Kelley: When a loss occurs and I’m just discussing my policy that we write then you would be paid on actual cash value. Everything that you would be paid would be a depreciated value. The next thing we’re going to talk about is co-health insurance. Have you ever heard the term co-insurance Danny?
Danny Johnson: You know, I haven’t.
Gloria Kelley: Well that is the dreaded word in insurance because normally if you have a replacement cost policy and this will go under just what we were talking about, if you had a replacement cost policy and that’s how you stated it and you told them, “I am unwilling to write a replacement cost.” This policy will have a co-insurance valuation in it. Co-insurance meaning you and the insurance company are writing this together. If you fail to hold up to your end and insure it the replacement cost, you will become a co- insurer. You will be penalized through this means. If you insured the house for $150, that’s what you should have and then you insured it for $100,000 – We call that you did insure it for $100, you should have for $150. You put the $150 over $100,000 you will come out with a percentage and you will be penalized for that amount for your loss. Let’s see what it is $150 divided by $100,000 –
Danny Johnson: That’s about 66 I think.
Gloria Kelley: Probably.
Danny Johnson: It’s really 66% of the value.
Gloria Kelley: Then your loss, that you’re depreciation. You’ll be paid 66% of the loss, so you can see you can really be penalized.
Danny Johnson: Right. And I think a lot of people do that as investors say, “Well, I’m just going to put the coverage of this amount to save myself some money.”
Gloria Kelley: Yes. And if your policy is a strict replacement cost, you will be penalized where others just pays you the actual cash value. You will be penalized 66%. So if you had a new roof on the house and that’s what you got damaged, but you were underinsured, your depreciation would be very little on that roof. If you had it two years, you’d just get the depreciation of two years. If you had that roof on for two years and you were under insured, you’d be penalized and be paid 66%, can you see what a difference that is?
Danny Johnson: Right.
Gloria Kelley: And you just became a co-insurance. If you don’t hold up your end of the bargain because when you buy that replacement cost policy, you’re telling me insurance carrier I will insure it to what it costs to replace it in today’s time. When you don’t then the penalty is that instead of 100%, you’re getting 66%. You become a co-insured. You have just shoeing them in the loss. Does that make sense to you?
Danny Johnson: Yeah definitely something you don’t want to do.
Gloria Kelley: No co-insurance is to me one of the most difficult things for the lay person the everyday insurance person to understand that’s why when I was working with my policy, I just didn’t want to have the replacement cost on me or it’s too hard for people to understand that. They can certainly understand depreciation but not a penalty. I find it easier for people to understand. Do you have any questions on that?
Danny Johnson: I think that was pretty clear and at the end of the episode we will let people know how they can reach you. So if that wasn’t clear, we’ll give you time at the end where you can tell them how to contact you to get more info about it.
Gloria Kelley: Okay. There were other things that I just want to briefly take times and make people aware. On most policies for your rental policies, you don’t have coverage for the owner occupant damage. If you have a renter who moves into your house and you’ve just put in new carpet and they decided to do their bleaching on your carpet and it ended up with a large bleach spots – it happens Danny, it happens.
Danny Johnson: I know. That’s why I’m laughing.
Gloria Kelley: I know. One client just had it happened last week. It’s unbelievable the things that I have faced with. That is not covered by most rental property policies. It’s just not going to be covered peril. That’s why you get a deposit premium to cover this type of loss that is not going to be covered under your insurance policy. And I always like to bring it to the attention of the clients. They may not like to hear this, but if an occupant damage is not covered, if they allow their children to use markers on all your walls and do their own drawings, it is not a covered peril. Our perils are far serious losses – tornado, fire, any type, but not owner occupied. I have had people tell me they’ve had this covered and I have seen how it occurred, but on the normal, it is not covered and I like for people to know that so that they’re not upset when they discover that damage was done. Whenever the tenant moves out and the house is then damaged, that’s not vandalism. It’s normal wear and tear. It’s really not normal. Let’s just call it wear and tear, not normal wear and tear but it’s not covered. That will not be covered under your homeowner policy and I like to bring that to everyone’s attention too. If you do damage to your own house that you have a homeowner’s policy, as broad as it is, damage by owner is not covered. I have told everything on if that were true, if you could have that, coverage I would redecorate about every three years – that new carpet, new window shades. I’d be busy redecorating.
Danny Johnson: It makes sense why it’s there.
Gloria Kelley: Yes, yes. Why would you do that for rental property when you can’t even get that covered for your own property, your own house that you’re living in. The other thing that I like to bring to attention, I’m going to talk about flood insurance. People need to understand flood is a totally separate coverage. No homeowner policy, no rental policy – if you’re in a flood zone, you need to purchase a separate policy for flood. It is an excluded peril on every policy. Our policy provide some flood coverage, but it has a $50,000 deductible and you may think you’ve never get that. You’d be surprised what we’ve had happened with that $50,000 but it was also for people that didn’t even know they were flood sounds because floods change daily. Every time you put a new foundation in a subdivision, you just change the flood zone. To get flood a separate flood policy, you need to be in a flood zone. You can find that information from your city. You can go to your city hall. Call them. They have flood zone maps. You can tell them the street where you live. They’ll be able to tell you if you’re in a flood zone or not. If you’re in a flood zone, I highly recommend getting the coverage because as you well know over the past few months here in Texas, it seems like that Houston – all of East Texas has been inundated and flooded. It’s a great coverage to have when a flood occurs because they are devastating. Your homeowner policy excludes it. Our policy has that $50,000 our deductible, so it’s better if you buy a smaller deductible, get a $1,000 deductible and we offer that. So I just wanted to briefly talk about flood so that people know it’s not covered on the standard policy.
The other thing in our policy and I think this makes sense to – it will make sense to you because you’re in this business. Inspections on vacant properties, if you have a vacant property you need to inspect it weekly would be great if it’s vacant. Our policy requires a monthly inspection. You need to go in, you need to make sure that no one’s gone in and turned on the water flooding because mold is not covered and if you have a water loss inside your house and you leave it for weeks in a hot temperature, you’re going to have mold all over. Mold is an excluded coverage on almost every policy. I think homeowners provide some coverage, but all others do not. So that inspection is vitally important to keep you from having losses that won’t be covered by insurance. We also recommend you put some type of window covering over the windows if it’s a vacant property. You’re just getting rid of the opportunity for a theft. If I could stand in your front yard of your property and look to the backyard, you’ve got copper tubing in that house, you’ve got all kinds of things that I would like, but it’s going to be an attractive nuisance possibly for the neighborhood kids. So I do not recommend boarding up, but buy some type of paper shade to put on the inside of the windows, so it’s a question of whether it’s vacant or not.
Danny Johnson: That’s a great point.
Gloria Kelley: Well, I do not sell this product but there’s one called Ready Shade that’s excellent. It’s pleated, it looks like a shade and you can get it probably at Lowe’s Home Depot. No telling where you can buy but you cut it to size, so I highly recommend, and they’re about $5 a piece, so well worth it. Do you have any questions for me as far as vacant properties or flood or anything we’ve talked about today?
Danny Johnson: No I think it’s more of just the – so you mentioned inspections, it’s important for people to have inspections and you guys make it really simple to do that because you have a simple one page form that you just fill out every month and you hold onto it. We don’t have to send it to you. We just hold on to it for our records and then if there is a claim then we’ll show those inspection forms and it makes it really easy to put that as part of our processes to make sure that we do every month.
Gloria Kelley: Yes. And you just put it in your file. So if we ever need it, you have that handy. If there’s one thing that just kept repeating and repeating that people need to understand about insurance, it is just put you back where you were before the loss. Put you back to where you were, not better, and sometimes it’s going worse because you are underinsured. We’ve discussed that, but insurance is not a cure all. You have to be diligent to because if you have a loss, you’re going to have a loss. It’s time, energy, it’s frustrating to get a loss handled then get everybody back in place. So just understand, it’s not a cure all. It just prevents you from financial disaster, puts you back where you were before.
Danny Johnson: Right. And another thing I like about your policies is the ease of use. So whenever we’re closing on a property, we have the form that we add properties to and remove from as we pick up properties and sell houses and so it makes it very simple and we’re not having the call up answer a bunch questions and all that stuff and try to rush to get the binder up to the closer for closing. It makes it really nice, so I appreciate that. But so how can people, anybody out there listening that wants to talk to you more about what you guys offer or that have questions about insuring these investment properties, how can they reach you?
Gloria Kelley: Okay. Let me tell you our website is www.apiaprotects.com (in the plural). We have a toll free number, it’s 877-752-2742 and we really appreciate people calling and having questions about insurance. We always try to make our clients understand. We’re the ones to deal with insurance every day. Instead of racking your brain or trying to figure out, pick up the phone and call us or send us an email. It is our job to help you with your insurance coverage.
Danny Johnson: That’s great. I will include the phone number and the web address in the show notes that people can find at flippingjunkie.com/33 and there will also be a flyer that I’ll have that’s available for download for Gloria and APIA that you can download from that show notes page as well to learn a little bit more, so please check that out. Thank you very much Gloria for taking the time to be on the show and answer our questions.
Gloria Kelley: You’re very welcome Danny and let me add this to it. If someone sends an application in to us and references that they heard about this podcast, we will send them a gift.
Danny Johnson: Oh, I didn’t know you were going to do that.
Gloria Kelley: We’ll send you one too Danny.
Danny Johnson: Okay, great.
Gloria Kelley: Thank you. I really appreciate the time.
Danny Johnson: Yeah, thank you. Have a great afternoon.
Gloria Kelley: Thank you.
Alright. Another great episode on Flipping Junkie Podcast. Thank you for listening. Again the show notes page is flippingjunkie.com/33. You can get the phone number and there’ll be a link on there to go to their website as well as have a PDF flyer for their company, what they offer and how to contact them, so they can take that and print it out and have it. Definitely great people. Gloria and her team answering your questions and are very responsive.Check them out.
Thanks again for listening to the podcast. Be sure to check out REIMobile.com. Like I said, we’re out of beta, a lot of great features, a lot of ways to convert more leads into deals by selling up follow up reminders, assigning tasks, working with team members, all that kind of cool stuff. So check out reimobile.com. You guys have a great week and see you next week.
