For the five boroughs, building violations are becoming a huge issue when marketing commercial insurance to carriers. Carriers are checking if there are any violations sited for the risk before it is moved along in the underwriting process.
The Department of Buildings and The Housing Preservation Department issue violations for homes and buildings throughout New York City, which can be as simple as getting your fire extinguisher serviced and updated to bedbug remediation. Depending on the amount of violations (we’ve seen some properties with over 100) or the severity of the violation, carriers may decline to quote right off the bat or mandate that the violations be cleared up and only then reconsidered for quoting.
These violations are not new and have been in effect for many years. However, the major concern now is they have become the reason carriers are declining to insure the property. Considering the state the insurance market is in now, we do not need any more obstacles in our way to secure coverage. The majority of declinations are coming from Umbrella and Excess Liability carriers. It is already very difficult to secure Umbrella coverage right now. These violations have become unavoidable and need to be cleared up as soon as possible as they could take weeks, even months, to close.
You can check the websites – type in your address and see if there are any open violations listed for your property. If there are, we urge you to look into clearing them up as quickly as possible, so it does not interfere with renewing your coverage or marketing for an alternate option.
