Commercial landlord insurance for your building and rental income.

Own the whole building on one title? You insure the building, the rent and your liability as its owner.

Letting a commercial strata unit? See commercial landlord insurance for your strata unit for the cover you may need for your fit-out, glass, rental income and liability alongside the scheme's policy.

The building is insured for what it would cost to rebuild today, which is a different number from what it would sell for. That part of the cover is commercial building insurance, and commercial property insurance explains which parts of a property are yours to insure and which are your tenant's. The policy needs to name the people or entities it is intended to protect. A sale, or a move into a trust or super fund, means checking those names, including the trustee's role. We work from the ownership and lender details to get each name right.

A cheaper quote can look like the answer to a renewal that keeps rising. We look at the price and the rebuild figure together, because a cheaper renewal on a short sum insured can cost you far more at claim time.

A tenant paying for the building insurance through outgoings has every reason to want it cheaper, and some ask for the building to be insured for less. If it burns, you carry the gap. We show you the right figure and its price, even when that means a higher premium, and what a lower figure would leave you to pay.

Most of the policies we place carry an average clause. It usually tests your sum insured against 80 per cent of the building's rebuild cost. Fall below that and a partial claim can be cut back. Your policy sets how that reduction is calculated for your building, and whether smaller claims are exempt. On a total loss you are paid up to the policy's limit, and the cost beyond it is yours. The co-insurance clause explained sets out the sums.

That is why we put a rebuild figure on every commercial building we insure, at new business and at every renewal. It's a desktop building replacement estimate, so it's worked out from aerial and street imagery rather than a site visit. We commission it for our purposes as your broker, to inform the advice we give you. We send you the report itself, not a summary, so you can see what was assumed, and a broker goes through it with you. We review aerial imagery of the roof alongside it, one of the more than 1,200 roof condition checks we run a year. Imagery cannot certify a roof or find every defect, so we tell you what it shows and what it cannot.

If the desktop building replacement estimate shows little or no gap, we move on to suitable options. If it shows a real gap, we ring you back with prices at more than one sum insured. You choose the cover before anything is placed. To see where your building may sit first, try the underinsurance risk checker.

Each figure is the whole landlord policy: most of those owners also insure loss of rent and their own liability on it. What sets yours is the building, where it stands and what your tenants do inside it. What commercial landlord insurance costs has more premiums from our own book.

At renewal we compare cover and price across insurers. We favour insurers who pay claims properly, and we only suggest moving you to a cheaper one when it is a lot cheaper. Even then, we tell you plainly if that insurer's claims service is weaker. How a broker compares with buying direct is in why use an insurance broker.

When a landlord tells us the annual rent, we confirm it: "that's your annual rent excluding GST but including outgoings, yes?" Gross rent and net rent are very different figures. If your lease lets you recover rates, land tax or insurance from the tenant, those payments stop when the rent does. They belong in the figure, or you pay them yourself while the building is empty.

Most of the policies we place also put an average clause on the rent item. A rent figure set too low can be cut back the same way a short building is. The figure also goes stale, because a new tenant or a rent review changes it. We generally lift loss of rent by around four per cent a year even when you have not called, because landlords take a rent increase most years. Our guide to loss of rent insurance for a commercial property has a claim where the schedule still carried an old tenant's rent.

The policy pays for the period you chose and will not stretch a short one. Picking 24 months does not by itself double the rent you are insured for, so that total has to be enough as well. A rebuild runs through make-safe, assessment, design and approvals, and tender. Then come 12 to 18 months of construction, and then finding a tenant.

A five-year lease does not guarantee the rent will continue after serious damage. The damage and destruction clause may suspend or reduce the rent while the premises cannot be used. Rent cover also follows the building cover. It normally pays only when the damaged property is itself insured. A risk you left off the building is usually left off the rent as well. The commercial landlord insurance guide tells two of our loss of rent claims: one we challenged and had paid, and one where the cover ran out.

$20 million is the public liability limit usually written into a commercial lease, and it sits on a policy written around your tenant's business. If the building itself injures someone, the injured person's lawyer runs a title search, finds the owner and serves you as well. A court can also make an owner pay a share of an injury payout when the person hurt sued only the tenant. On some of the liability policies we place, a tenant's policy also insures the landlord where the lease requires it, but only for liability arising from the tenancy. It may not cover your own liability as owner, so we check its scope before you rely on it. The limit your lease sets for your tenant is no guide to your own, so we look at your obligations as owner, the building and its use before recommending one.

That is what property owners liability is for. Most of the landlord policies behind the premiums above already include it. How owners get sued for injuries shows how it happens on a leased building. You can also have your interest noted on your tenant's public liability and property policies. That tells their insurer you have an interest in the building. It does not by itself make you an insured or give you liability cover.

The air conditioning is where owners get caught. A lease commonly makes the tenant service and repair it, while a capital failure stays with you. Breakdown is not part of the building cover we arrange, so it needs its own section: equipment breakdown insurance. Say a system was installed for about $10,000 twenty years ago. Replacing it today can cost about $30,000 to $40,000, while breakdown cover is often capped at about $10,000, or not taken at all. That cap is printed on your schedule, and the policy booklet will not show it.

In the leases we hold, glass appears twice: once as something to insure, and again as a duty to replace broken glass. Insuring the glass pays for it. The lease still says who must replace it. Where a lease asks for glass cover, it is generally inexpensive.

Your own fixtures, floor coverings, plumbing and wiring sit inside the building cover. Furniture or appliances you own inside a tenancy need contents cover on your own policy. Your lease may make your tenant responsible for insuring an item, but that does not show the tenant insured it, or tell you which policy covers it. Check the policy definitions and the schedule as well. Without that, you and your tenant can each think the other insured the item, and nobody does. Whoever has the item insured usually pays to repair it first, and its insurer may later recover from the other side. Insuring what is yours means it is repaired without waiting to settle who was at fault.

Your solicitor can tell you what your lease's damage and destruction clause means for your rent. Commercial lease insurance requirements covers what a lease usually asks each side to hold.

A new tenant can move the building premium a long way, in either direction. Cooking is the change most worth telling us about the week it happens. A cafe with no deep fryer that puts in a benchtop fryer is a different risk to the insurer, and some trades fall outside the mainstream market altogether. Known before the lease is signed, the premium can be built into the rent or the outgoings. Who pays building insurance on a commercial property shows what one tenant's change of trade did to a building's premium.

Many renewal schedules still do not list the tenancies, though insurers have tidied this up in recent years. Where yours does not, nothing at renewal prompts you to report a new tenant. The insurer may look anyway. At renewal it can read your tenant's website and a satellite image of the yard, and a tenant's website often makes the business sound more complex than it is. Where it oversells the work, we give the insurer evidence of what really happens on site, such as current photos and a plain description of the work.

Empty between tenants. On most of the policies we place, cover for fire, storm, water damage, malicious damage and theft stops once a building has been empty for 90 days in a row, unless the insurer agrees in writing. On most of them, a building that is partly let is not treated as empty. Tell us as soon as you know a tenancy is ending, so the insurer's written agreement is in place before the clock runs out.

After a fire or storm, the claims manager looks wider than the damage you can see. That means the time the building may be unusable, the lost rent, the make-safe, debris removal, professional fees and anything else the policy may respond to. From the first call, the claims manager tells you which records to keep and which repairs to hold until the insurer or its loss adjuster is involved.

The insurer makes the decision, and we press for what the policy and the evidence support.