Commercial Property
Buildings Coverage
Commercial property coverage for buildings insures the physical structure of your business location against fire, windstorm, hail, theft, and other covered perils. Whether you own your building outright or are a tenant with improvements to protect, getting the coverage amount right — true replacement cost, not market value — is the most important decision in the policy.
Commercial Property
What You Need to Know About Buildings Coverage
Replacement Cost vs. Market Value
Commercial property should be insured at replacement cost — what it costs to rebuild with current materials and labor. Market value and assessed value are both frequently lower than replacement cost, and insuring to those figures creates a coverage gap that surfaces at claim time.
Improvements and Betterments
Tenants who have made improvements to leased space — built-out offices, specialized facilities, equipment installations — have an insurable interest in those improvements even though they don't own the building. Coverage needs to be structured to address this.
Ordinance and Law Coverage
If a covered loss requires rebuilding to current code — and buildings over 10 years old almost always do — ordinance and law coverage pays the additional cost. Without it, code upgrades come out of pocket even when the loss itself is fully covered.