GI208: Multi-family Insurance with Micah Mattox

GI208: Multi-family Insurance with Micah Mattox

Micah Mattox is the director of both commercial insurance and multifamily insurance at RealProtect, a real estate insurance brokerage operating nationwide. RealProtect helps real estate investors manage their risk and protect their assets by using specialized programs designed to fit their needs.

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Announcer:
Welcome to the Global Investor Podcast, a show that focuses on helping foreign investors enter the lucrative US real estate market. Host Charles Carillo combines decades of real estate investing experience with a professional background in international banking to interview experts in all areas of US real estate investing. Now, here’s your host, Charles Carillo.

Charles:
Do you have money sitting in the stock market? And you’re worried about it or worse. You have money sitting at the bank, not keeping up with inflation. My name is Charles Carillo, founder and managing partner of Harborside Partners. And since 2006, I’ve been investing my money and my family’s money into income producing properties. These are real assets, real properties with real addresses that produce real cash flow. At Harborside Partners, we provide passive investors who love real estate with a turnkey investing solution. If you want to put your money to work in real estate, but can’t find deals, don’t have the time to get funding in. The last thing that productive people want to do is manage real estate. We find the deals. We fund the deals and we manage the tenants, the termites and the properties. Partner with us at investwithharborside.com. That’s investwithharborside.com. Go to investwithharborside.com. If you love real estate, you like the idea of passive income and believe that income producing properties will appreciate over time. Go to investwithharborside.com. That’s investwithharborside.com.

Charles:
Welcome to another episode of the Global Investors Podcast; I’m your host Charles Carillo. Today we have Micah Mattox. He is the director of both commercial insurance and multifamily insurance at RealProtect, a real estate insurance brokerage operating nationwide. Realprotect helps real estate investors manage their risk and protect their assets by using specialized programs designed to fit their needs. So thank you so much for being on the show, Micah.

Micah:
Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.

Charles:
So please give us a little background on yourself both personally and professionally prior to getting involved with insurance.

Micah:
Absolutely. So originally was going to law school and, and just found a lot of interest in that, you know, a lot of interest in in courtroom stuff and just the way the law was and ended up helping out a friend open a State Farm, and that’s all I got into insurance. Yeah, and that was, I guess about 10 years ago now. So a lot has changed since then. It’s an ever-evolving industry. But you know, I I kind of started from that, that standpoint, you know, you know, just trying to, you know, understand, you know, the legality behind insurance and, and that’s helped a lot, I think in and how the insurance contracts are put together. But yeah, that’s, that’s kind of where I started at.

Charles:
So are you specifically working now with commercial properties nationwide? Is that really your focus? Not, not so much residential anymore?

Micah:
Well, it, it, it’s mixed, you know, so habitation, you know, is, is, you know, multifamily and things like that. So that, that’s what what I focus on mostly. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative> real Protect as a whole, you know, they, they do schedules of single family homes and just really anything <laugh>. But yeah, what I focus on is mostly multi-family, commercial property, things like that.

Charles:
Oh, that’s interesting. Okay. Cause you know, real estate right now or insurance with real estate, multi-family, one of the hot topics right now I mean, outside of interest rate, let’s say is insurance, especially where I’m based in Florida, but it’s not just Florida. I mean, last year I had an insurance policy on a property in New England and increased by 12%. And for our listeners, you know, can you explain a little bit about how, you know, what are some of the main factors of that will impact property insurance rates? Because everybody always tells me I was, I was out with friends last weekend and everybody always tells me their insurance down here in Florida. Every, it’s like the big topic, and then they’re telling me I’ve never had any claims <laugh>. So I mean, you’ve probably heard this many more times than I have. So can you tell us what kind of impacts your property insurance rates?

Micah:
Absolutely. So we could probably devote a few hours to that alone, <laugh> to, to really boil that down. That there’s a couple things here in the US at least that are really affecting rates. One, and this is one that’s actually just recently come up is the aging buildings. You know, a lot of our, a lot of our structures, a lot of the buildings, a lot of the properties are getting older and older. And what’s happening is you’ve got carriers wanting to move to newer and newer, and you’ve got the properties getting older and older. So you kinda got that fight going on in both directions. That’s a really big one there, there’s a lot of state specific stuff Florida just, you know, for, for natural reasons that I’m sure you kind of understand you know, it, it, it can be a problem.

Micah:
And that the, the science behind that is a lot of the carriers that we see operating in Florida they operate really the loss. You know, so for example, in the last five years, I think the average right now is, is at about 200%. So basically for every dollar that they bring in, they’re paying $2, adding claims for any business that’s unsustainable. And, and at the end of the day, I mean that’s, you know, insurance is a business. The carriers, you know, when they go into a state like a Florida, Louisiana, Texas, places like that, it has to be sustainable. And there’s a lot of help that I think the government is, is trying to put in place. You know, for example, in Florida government DeSantis in the most recent legislative session actually passed a lot of stuff from reinsurance to the way claims are handled to a lot of the processes.

Micah:
Just really trying to clean it up, make it more concise and, and hopefully give everybody the best fighting chance. Ultimately there’s still gonna be major storms. That’s just, that’s the nature of Florida and, and really just, you know, anywhere across the gulf you know, so to a degree it’s, it’s always gonna be tough. And, and, and, you know, you compounded those things, so you’ve got rate increases from the carrier losses, then you add in the aging structures, so there’s fewer and fewer carriers wanting to even place insurance. And it just, it gets really tough. I mean, sometimes on, on some properties in a state like Florida out of, I mean, we have access right now to about 350 carriers and brokers that we operate with and partner with. Sometimes it literally does come down to one carrier out of all those you know, it, it’s not always that we’re getting to choose between the best three.

Micah:
Sometimes we get lucky to have one. And, and, and then the, the capacity issue and, and that, that’s a really, really big one lately. So really what that means is, you know, whereas you used to in a state like Florida, you used to get one insurance carrier, let’s say you’ve got a 20 million property you, you’ve got one insurance carrier, they take the whole thing. Now, carriers wanting to bite off such small chunks that you may have one carrier that takes 2 million, one takes 1 million, one takes 5 million, and you have to kind of piece me on it until you get to the full amount of insurance. The problem there is each carrier along the way, each of those five, you know, we’ll call it a 10, that you have to put together to make the full amount of insurance, each one of those has to make their money. You know, so, so it just becomes ever more expensive involving that many carriers. And like I said, sometimes it does come down to, to no other options, so that there’s a lot of complexity. Knowing how to navigate the market I think really, really helps in a state like Florida, just so that you know exactly how you’re putting it together. You kind of know what levers the pool, what buttons to press and, and where to go.

Charles:
Yeah. It’s one other thing that Florida has outside of our weather and hurricanes is that I was reading an article a couple months back saying 76% of lawsuits against insurance companies were from Floridians. And there’s tons of fraud going down here all through Florida. With, with that, and I imagine it’s in other states too, but that’s a huge thing that has added right on top of everything else you just mentioned, I feel,

Micah:
And that’s one thing that I think you know, that we’re gonna start seeing some good movement on. So Florida, the reason that they bear that title as the most litigious when it comes to insurance, is that there was a process called assignment of benefits, A O b. I don’t know if you’ve ever come across that or read that. No. So let, let’s say that you experience a property loss there was a technique if we can call it that, a technique I guess, where certain public adjusters, attorneys, contractors would kind of team up, and there’s a process by which they can allegedly <laugh> in some cases where they can allegedly gain the system, maybe a bad way to put it, but where they can Yeah. Induce larger losses. You know, what may start as a five or $10,000 incident or a $50,000 incident becomes half a million dollars, a million dollars, 2 million, whatever it may be through this process.

Micah:
And that, I think is the biggest thing that, that they’ve really fought to, in Florida, at least from a legislative standpoint to curtail, is just trying to clean up that process. And like all things that started as a very meeting, you know, that there was a need behind that process, you know, it, it was a good process. And then, you know, of course the few came along and ruined it for the mini. But, but nevertheless, I mean, that, that hurts everybody. You know, if what should be a $10,000 claim, you know, gets paid out at a million dollars, that’s not sustainable, you know, for anybody.

Charles:
Right. Or also, someone has an older roof that should be replaced, and now there’s some wind damage from a hurricane and they’re getting pulled out paid for a full roof, which really shouldn’t happen. I mean, you had, you have a lot of depreciation on that. Yeah. It’s just, you know, you, you were, it was, but that’s, yeah, you, not to get into the whole thing here about lawyers and everything else, but <laugh> there is. So for real estate investors come back to kinda what we really wanna talk about is, you know, I’ve had it with within claims myself, or not claims, but with really within carriers that on a renewal, they have a whole list of stuff that they want you to fix or when you’re in, this is perfectly fine, but these are ways I would feel to avoid large increases on insurances, kinda keeping the property in great shape and making sure everything’s maintained. Are there any other ways for real estate investors to avoid, if at all possible? And I mean, we’re talking, we have listeners from all over the United States, all over the world, but investing here in the United States, I mean, for places where we’re really in the Southeast, I guess you would say, or any other place, I mean, how do you avoid these large increases on insurance premium renewals?

Micah:
Absolutely. And, and I think you touched on something very important. So carriers do come out and inspect, you know, just like that process you noted, they’ll come out and inspect and say, Hey, here, here’s 10 things on your property that, that we’d like to see fixed. Now in the right context. And again, it’s all about being in the proper context. You know, if they come out and do that, they’re helping you to present your property to the carrier in the best way possible and helping to avoid losses you know, and, and claims and things like that. And that there’s a mixed bag. Sometimes <laugh> some of these recommendations can be can be overwhelming sometimes, but most of the time they are very valid things. And you know, for example this is one we had come up recently in Florida.

Micah:
The first thing a carrier does when they’re analyzing your property, they’re gonna hop on Google Maps and they’re gonna analyze your roof. So if you have, and then this, the other day was a flat roof, so it’s a, you know, flat membrane style roof, and there was a lot of pooling you know, you can tell by the water stains and things like that. You know, and, and that was actually on their list of things that, you know, hey, we’d like to see this cleaned up, you know, see what you can do about that, make repairs is necessary. But again, you know, if that’s fixed next time the satellite goes around, it’s a nice clean roof. Next year when you shop your insurance, the first thing they look at is that roof. You’ve got a clean roof. Well, you, you presented your property in the best way possible. And again, there’s much more to it than that. But you know, that, that line of thinking, I think helps a lot of people. If, if you kind of take those to heart and say, Hey, you know, how can I improve my property? Because we’re having to fight for that capacity. We’re having to fight, you know, to, to get insurance. You know, it’s, it’s not like it used to be. You know, so having your best foot forward in your properties best foot forward is ever more important.

Charles:
Hmm, that’s great. That’s great. So when choosing an insurance broker, I mean, what really differentiates a good broker from an average broker if if, you know, if I’m buying investment properties, multifamily.

Micah:
So in this industry, in our industry, which is real estate, I, I think it really comes down to having somebody who focuses on real estate. And, and I think the hard part when it comes to a lot of insurance agents and brokers is that sometimes at least they’re across the board. You know, they may focus on 10 industries or a hundred and it, it kinda makes it hard. I, I, I think we see the best success and, and frankly, the best diagnosis and the best program from insurance brokers who, who do focus solely on insurance, or sorry, <laugh>, that’s good. Who, who focus solely on real estate. You know, just because they, they understand the business. And I think what a lot of people don’t understand is, you know, you’re not just buying a piece of property, you’re buying in most cases, or in all cases, really a real functioning business. And understanding how to marry those two things together, you know, covering the property is important, but also the wellbeing of the business and just knowing how to, you know, how to work through those waters.

Charles:
Yeah. There’s one thing if people ever ask me about it, I say, you know, go and find local landlords or property owners that are owning similar properties to you, you know, age type stuff like this, and ask them who you, they use. And usually I’ve gotten some very good recommendations from doing that. And that’s for property managers or anything else really. Yeah. But it’s really just finding people that are in that similar property that are similar to what you want to be doing or doing what you wanna be doing, let’s say mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and then getting it that way and kind of sorting through what then going through and, cause you know, you go through online or something like this, you’re never gonna find anything. It has to go from like a referral source. You’re just gonna find a lot of homeowner insurance companies that don’t know what it is when you have tenants in the property.

Micah:
Certainly. Well, and, and it’s such a vast difference as well. If it’s a, you know, a duplex for example, you’re gonna have a whole different group of carriers that have entertained that versus a thousand unit complex or you know, a $5 million commercial property, something like that. It, it’s really two different worlds. But no, you’re, you’re exactly right. And I, I think a lot of people can benefit from that, you know, just, you know, referring number one, but also just, you know, going out and looking for similar properties and saying, Hey, where this is at, you know, where do you have your insurance at? You know, where do you get this from? You know, I think that’s something a lot of people are starting to do more and more. And, and it really helps, you know, in, in our position, you know, we’re, we’re all across the nation so we can find a solution, you know, regardless. And you know, we’re, we’re in tune with a lot of these carriers, but sometimes there is a local carrier who just, you know, is, is more regionally attuned. And, and sometimes you can find them by doing that. Yeah.

Charles:
Yeah. Having the nationwide carrier just great that you brought that up again. And that’s a great point. I had a mentor years back, tell me, you know, just work with the nationwide character when you’re getting into commercial multi-family, and it makes pricing everything. First of all, you have the relationship, you don’t have all these different relationships. If you’re a, say you’re in five states or whatever, but you have the relationship, but you also you can go and whenever you’re doing it makes it much easier, easier whenever you’re doing your underwriting to go out and get bids on these properties for the insurance. Because so many times I’ve seen so much difference between what I’m getting quoted on properties and what people are showing me on their underwriting. And you’re like, who is this insurance carrier? You have <laugh>? Like how long have, have you been with them for like 30 years and never, like, you never filed anything with them?

Micah:
Sometimes. Yes. Yeah. And, and, and, and so that we, we’ve got a process with, you know, where we provide indications. So let’s say you were gonna buy a property tomorrow, you can send me an om and just, you know, some high level details, whatever you have, the more, the better. But you can send that over and I can say, Hey you know, again, just, you know, and this is by us having properties all over and, and, and, you know, economies have scale, doing deals that are similar and things like that, you know, we can say, Hey, for this type property in this area, this vintage, this construction, and just kind of, you know, pull those factors together. You know, we can say, Hey, an approximate rate in today’s market, when you go out to price insurance, what you can expect is X. And, and here’s y And again, we can look at things like crime scores and just all those things behind it.

Micah:
But I, I found that to be, and we’ve got a lot of good feedback that it’s found to be just a really good tool, you know, to, to have those actual real life, real world numbers. Cuz they are drastically off typically, like you said, you know, sometimes I, you know, you look at an OEM and you know, it says, Hey, the insurance, you know, should be, we, we project it to be, you know, 20 k and it’s really 200,000 and that, that changes everything. And, and again, I think, you know, to, to circle back to a previous point, I think that that comes from having somebody who focuses in real estate insurance. You know, that, I mean, that throw off the entire n o i on the property and just, you know, it’s, it’s a trickle effect, a domino effect into a lot of other things. If that one number, you know, is that off, you know? Yeah.

Charles:
It’s also one thing, if you’re selling a property, like an investment property, you should get a quote and include that in with your package when you’re selling it. And that makes it, that, you know, it’s not pie in the sky. Listen, this is a quote I’ve just got, it’s dated. Here’s the person you can talk to. You know, and it’s, it’s concrete.

Micah:
It, it, it just seems like it’s hard to sort through for a lot of people I’ve gotten that feedback a hundred times. It’s just, it’s hard to know, you know, to your point, who to go to and, you know, just, just where to go. And, and I think that would really help out a lot of people, you know, like you said, just including some of that data on the front end.

Charles:
What do you think, as someone buying a first multi-family property, investment property and they’ve never had a commercial property insurance policy before? I mean, what are the things that they should be asking for and what should they be wanting to see in their policy? I mean, what are the, what are the high level things they should be really checking for to make sure it works?

Micah:
Absolutely. So one really good factor that we see pretty often is that a lot of lenders, oftentimes when you’re going out and acquiring this debt, a lot of lenders have a really, really thorough insurance checklist. So number one mm-hmm. <Affirmative>, typically we’ve, we’ve got a, you know, a guide and we can say, Hey, you know, you’re required to have X, here’s what it does, here’s why you’ve gotta have it, and so on and so forth. And we can have that discussion. It’s hard to boil it down to just a couple of things, replacement cost. So there are different ways for a property to be valued. Replacement cost is, like I said, it’s a lender requirement a hundred percent of the time. That, that’s very different than something like an actual cash value a c v, you’ll hear that term. Throw it around making sure how the roof is covered, you know, in certain states like Florida, if it gets over a certain age, and it really varies, but if it gets over a certain age, sometimes they’ll make the roof actual cash value, then the rest of the building replacement cost.

Micah:
And again, you know, if there were, you know, an event, a claim that, that’s gonna make a big impact on, on what you actually see the claim proceeds. I’m trying to pick another one or two co-insurance I is a really, really big one. And that is a tool to, to boil that down, that’s a tool just used to ensure that an insured is ensuring their property to value. So what that stops is, you know, owning a 5 million property, trying toure it for a million and save some money and, and just really, really undervalue how you’re placing your insurance. That, that’s a big one. And I think that goes hand in hand with the actual replacement costs. You know, five or 10 years ago, there were some people, you know, some carriers that were ensuring for maybe 50 or a hundred dollars per square foot in certain areas.

Micah:
Florida right now, I mean, we’re, we’re not seeing anything, anybody going below probably 110 to 125. But then again, there’s some areas, you know, you take a New York or, you know, certain construction types, you could be three or $400 a square foot that you need to ensure for. And we’ve got a lot of tools that help us to kind of figure out what that is and to work with somebody to make sure that we’re dialing that in as best we can, you know, a reasonable amount, you know, but also getting good coverage in place. And I think that’s, that, that’s the biggest thing, you know, for somebody buying a first time property to ensure that they’re getting is a marriage of the two. You know, you don’t want too little coverage, you don’t want too much, you know, just right. <Laugh>, you know? Yeah. I’m trying to find that middle ground.

Charles:
Yeah. The replacement value is something I’ve definitely seen differences on before, and that’s, that can be a dangerous thing because you’re like, how do you think, how do you see this as this and this other company says this, and then they’re telling me, you know what I mean? And you’re really trying to cipher what it is. And I remember years back complaining to a contractor buddy of mine, and I was like, I was complaining to him about the replacement. He goes, Charles, you just don’t even understand, even if you’re place burnt down, they’re talking about what’s, you don’t even, there’s a lot more cost. I mean, you have to prep, you know, you don’t even know how expensive it is to remove all the debris before they rebuild. I mean, there’s so many costs in addition to just, you can’t just say build, you know, take it and goes, oh, it’s so many hundred dollars a foot to rebuild this house. Right? Well, you have to cite, you have to prep the site, you have through all this other stuff that goes along with it. And I don’t think a lot of people take that into consideration when they’re looking at their insurance policy.

Micah:
Well, and, and I think it’s important too, to consider, you know, at the end of the day, this is a contract, it’s a custom built contract for your property. You know, I, I would, I can easily say no two properties the same. They may look similar <laugh>, but when it comes to their insurance, you know, no, no two properties and no two policies are exactly the same. You know that there’s a joke of course, in, in contract law, the big print giveth, the small print, take it away, <laugh>. So it’s important, like you said, you know, to ensure, you know, all, all, all your endorsements, all your exclusions and just to have somebody who can, you know, number one, to understand those things, but number two, to articulate those to you in terms that you understand, to, you know, to just make sure that you know what you’re getting into.

Micah:
You know, ultimately everybody has to determine their own risk tolerance. You know, you may be, you know, a higher, you know, you, you may be saying, Hey, I wanna take on more risk. I wanna do higher deductibles. You know, certain exclusions don’t bother me. I I’m most focused on cost. But then you also may be risk averse and say, Hey, you know, I, I want low deductibles. I I want, you know, the absolute top notch coverage. You know, I, I want no exclusions or, you know, as limited as there can be, and so on and so forth. So again, just part of that is exploring who you are as an investor and how that lines up with how you buy insurance.

Charles:
So when we were starting off the conversation, you’re talking about older properties, and you know, I’ve, for example, from my own experience, I used to own a hundred plus year old properties, and every two to three years I would need to find a new carrier and sometimes a new insurance broker, right? Cause they wouldn’t have a carrier that would work for it. And, you know, how does a property owner handle this most effectively? And for me, it was just, you’re kind of dreading when those renewals came up because you’re like, am I gonna get renewed? What am I getting renewed for? What is, like, what is all this work I have to do? So yeah,

Micah:
I, I think the biggest thing that helps there is, is working with an independent agent. And what, what I mean when I say that is, you know, as an independent agent, I’m not tied to one carrier. I I don’t have, you know, for example, a State farm, you know, when I worked there at State Farm, I’ve got one bullet. If State Farm doesn’t work out, I’m done. You know, if, if the underwriting doesn’t line up or it’s not, you know, within the property type, or it’s too old or whatever you know, you’re done. So having an independent agent who can access many carriers, you know, in, in theory, there’s no need to engage more than more than one person. There’s no need to do that because, you know, if this year your property’s not on, or the rate goes way up, okay, well that’s great, we’ll go back up to market, we’ll find somebody else commensurate that, that can handle everything hopefully at a, at a better rate.

Micah:
And, and, and you can move around. And that actually leads me to another really good point, which is that a lot of people a lot of us were told growing up, you know, stick with an insurance company by insurance when you’re 16 or 18 or 20 or whatever, stick with ’em forever and they’ll love you back. If you love them, they’ll love you back. There’s loyalty. And, and not to say that that’s not somewhat true, but in a commercial insurance setting, you can switch your carriers once a year and that there’s no penalty, there’s no that, there’s no downside to doing. So as long as you’re, like I said, ensuring that it’s commensurate that there’s no downside. You know, same thing with, I mean, truly your, with your personal insurance these days. But I think that’s something that, you know, a lot of people, you know, would, would not get used to or, or would not traditionally be used to is, you know, the, the switching, you know, it’s kind of seen as a bad thing in all reality, really, all that does is ensure that you’ve got the best carrier at the best rate at that point in time.

Micah:
Insurance is a cycle. Somebody’s on the bottom, somebody’s on the top, you know, claims are going up, claims are going down, rates are going up, rates are going down. It’s cyclical. You know, so just ensuring that you’re catching the best rate at the best time with the best carrier, that shopping process is to do that.

Charles:
So when should investors reach out to an insurance broker? I mean, they, should they be reaching out to get a quote when putting in an offer, like as you mentioned before, or once a property is under contract?

Micah:
So, so it’s, it’s different things at different times. Oftentimes somebody will reach out and say, Hey, we’ve got this property. We’re thinking about submitting the loi. Here’s the information. Can we get the indication? And that’s when we’ll go kind of c crunch our numbers, put together our reports, and go ahead and send that back. And that typically factors into underwriting. Once the deal is accepted that LOI is accepted, you know, converts ’em, becomes a psa at that point typically is when we go out to market, you know, we’re, we’re fully fully shopping and marketing for insurance to get actual bindable quotes. So that’s typically the process we see. But to answer that question directly, they can reach out at any point and we can kind of guide them through what the options are, what best fits the point that they’re at, at that point in time, and, and just go from there.

Charles:
Yeah, they definitely should probably reach out before they have a property in their contract to start building a relationship with someone like yourself.

Micah:
Certainly. Yeah. Well, and, and, and the sooner the better. And, and that’s, you know, I’m always happy to have that conversation and, you know, sometimes it’s, it’s not even talking about a property. Sometimes it’s discussing an m msa, Hey, we’re looking at Jacksonville, or Hey, we’re looking at Houston, Texas, or, you know, Lexington, Kentucky, or it could be anywhere, but at least, you know, kind of getting those parameters. And, and what that allows us to do is kind of give high level guidance and say, okay, in this area, here’s the, here’s the goods, here’s the bads, watch out for this. And we can even kind of, you know, boil that down to a property type, you know, Hey, it’s gonna be more expensive if it’s older than this, or if it has this type of roof, or if it, you know, again, we can kind of give those general, you know, guidances, you know, that way at least you know what you’re working with.

Charles:
Yeah, that’s great. I didn’t even thought about that. Having those parameters before you’re actually going and refining your criteria when you’re searching mm-hmm. <Affirmative>. So having this conversation with an insurance broker earlier than later, before you’re going talking to your real estate broker, because like you said, it might be a difference between 1978 or 1979 and 1983, depending on what happened at that point and how they worked their tables.

Micah:
Yeah, well, and, and, and we find that typically what happens is it, it, it is a partnership. You know, that this business is relational like any other. Real estate is extremely relational insurance is also extremely relational. That can be your relationship with your agent, that can be your agent’s relationship with the carriers. You know, all these things have to kinda line up and, and that does lead into economies of scale. One thing that really helps us out is we’ve just done so many deals in so many areas, and we’re so familiar with the carriers and underwriters, you know, when, when we call, they know who it is. And that helps us. And when we need to ask for that favor, when we need to get that price down a little bit to <laugh>, you know, to push a deal across to the finish line and then get you closed or whatever it is, you know, when, when we have to make those asks it, it’s, you know, we have better success, I’ll put it that way, <laugh>.

Micah:
But again, it’s, it’s just, it’s so relational, and I think that’s the biggest thing at the end of the day. You know, it, it’s tough. And to, to sidebar real quick on this. One thing that we’ve seen here recently is a lot of people, you know, they’ll experience a larger renewal. Something, you know, goes way up. They scramble and they’ll tag it in 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 insurance agents stick, go out there to the marketplace. And, and really what happens if you’ve ever seen pinball, of course, we’re just out there bouncing around, <laugh>, bouncing off of each other, hitting the same carriers and, and a lot of those same things. So you know, I, I think the trust factor with your agent and knowing, hey, if they go out you know, again, assuming they’re doing everything properly, if they’re going out, they’ve touched everybody, they’ve done everything, that this is the true best result.

Micah:
It’s out there at this point in time. And, and, and not kind of, you know, clog at the system. And, and I think one thing that kinda helps us to understand that is the average underwriter at these carriers receives an average of between 100 and 200 new properties, new submissions a day, just to, you know, put that in context. And, and that kind of circles back to earlier when we’re talking about how you present your property is extremely important. You know, if they can look at it, we give them all the information they need, they’ve got a really, really clean property. They’re looking at, we’ve explained everything, pre-answered all their questions. If we can do all those things, you’re at the top of the stack.

Charles:
Hmm, interesting. Okay. So as we’re wrapping up here, I mean, what are some common mistakes you see real estate investors make in regards to insurance?

Micah:
There, there can be many. I, I think I would say just knowing, knowing risk tolerance and understanding what you’re receiving. I think that’s the biggest thing that, that a lot of people don’t receive. You know, that they’ll will talk to somebody, they’ve owned a property for a year or two you know, that they’ll want us to take a look at it. We’ll look at the policy and maybe there’s questions sometimes really, really, you know, important questions that will happen. We’ll say, Hey, is there a reason you chose to do that? And they’re like, I had no idea. <Laugh>, you know, I had no idea that was there. Nobody, nobody ever took the time to explain, you know, what I was receiving. And just to, to be frank, you know, some of these insurance policies are three and four and 500 pages.

Micah:
It, you know, it’s, it’s not it’s not like Sunday afternoon reading. So <laugh>, a lot of people aren’t going through and, and line by line saying, Hey, what’s this? And, you know, there’s a trust. They trust their agent, you know, to be, to be doing the right thing and looking out for ’em. And, and most of the time that does happen. But like I said, just, you know, knowing what you’re receiving, I think is the biggest thing. And, and again, it’s a kind of a domino from there, you know, goes into the quality of the coverage and, you know, the price and all those things. But knowing, knowing what you’re looking at, you know, having at least a little bit of insurance knowledge and there’s plenty of events out there who are willing to provide it, you know, to work with somebody and kind of give them that knowledge base. But I think that’s, that’s the biggest one we see.

Charles:
All right. Some great information. So hop our listeners, learn more about you and your business.

Micah:
So the best way to get ahold of me is gonna be by, by LinkedIn or, or by email. We’ve also got our website, which is just real protect.com, and it’s got a bunch of information really for any asset, any type of real estate, just kind of walks you through you know, how our process works.

Charles:
Okay. Well thank you so much for coming on today. I’ll put those links into our show notes and looking forward to connecting with you here in the near future.

Micah:
Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.

Charles:
Thank you.

Charles:
Hi guys! It’s Charles from the Global Investors Podcast. I hope you enjoyed the show. If you’re interested in get involved with real estate, but you don’t know where to begin, set up a free 30 minute strategy call with me at schedulecharles.com. That’s schedulecharles.com. Thank you.

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About Micah Mattox

Micah Mattox is the director of both commercial insurance and multifamily insurance at RealProtect, a real estate brokerage operating nationwide. RealProtect helps real estate investors manage their risk and protect their assets by using specialized programs designed to fit their needs. Learn More About

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