Real estate insurance is an easy way to protect you from many unpleasant surprises and additional expenses. However, there are many types of insurance policies available, and not every real estate owner needs to insure against all possible risks. Evans will be glad to guide you through the wide range of insurance products offered in Moscow, and will assist you in choosing the best one for you.

What kinds of insurance policies are available?

Title Insurance

Title insurance covers the risks of losing ownership rights due to possible problems with the title in the past, such as mistakes of privatization, previous purchases or transactions or other claims to the ownership rights. Buying an apartment that was privatized many years ago and has already had several owners can be sometimes risky because previous owners or their relatives could potentially challenge any of the previous transactions. Title insurance can protect you from such third party claims.

On the other hand, if you are purchasing an apartment directly from a developer, or if the apartment has a good and clear title, benefits of title insurance policy may not justify its cost.

Structural Damage Insurance

Structural damage insurance covers the risk of full or partial building destruction. It is required by many banks if you are obtaining a mortgage. However, it is less popular among Muscovites. For many, it’s hard to imaging that their building will be fully or partially destroyed. Moreover, such policies do not cover damages to the building caused by terrorism or construction sites nearby (such as foundation cracks).

Renovation and Furniture Insurance

Renovation and furniture insurance policy covers risks associated with damage to a property’s interior. Such damage may occur due to technical failure in the building, inside your property or any of the neighboring apartments.

Often, the conditions of apartments in the building vary in their level of upkeep and maintenance. Besides, the quality of plumbing and roof insulation often leaves much to be desired. Unprofessional renovation work and tenant’s negligence often cause flooding of neighboring properties. That is why this type of insurance is especially popular among property owners and we recommend purchasing this type of insurance to both tenants and landlords. This is especially worthwhile considering that the cost of such insurance is relatively low - from 0.1% to 1% of the coverage.

Liability Insurance

This insurance policy will compensate your neighbors or other related third parties in case they incur damages due to any technical malfunctions in your apartment or negligence. This type of insurance is especially useful to those apartment owners whose neighbors have performed expensive renovations in their apartments. You want to minimize the risk of large compensation or expensive work billed to you in the case of any technical failure that results in flooding in neighboring apartments.. This policy is useful to both landlords and tenants, and we highly recommend purchasing it for your property.

What paperwork will I need to collect the compensation from the insurance company?

To collect any type of compensation you need a copy of your insurance policy. The renovation and furniture insurance policy may require a document from the building management organization (usually DEZ or ZhEK), confirming that the damage has occurred and often stating its cause. It’s important to remember that you may not collect any compensation from the insurance company in case you, your agents or any other authorized persons, such as tenants were the cause of the damage. Among qualified causes of damage are: technical malfunction or neighbors negligence.

Liability insurance will also require a copy of a third party claim, addressed to the insurance company or to you, in addition to the DEZ statement.

How to choose an insurance company?

It is important to choose a company with a good track record of making compensation payments. For example, we have encountered an incident where an apartment was concurrently insured by two different companies. One of two compensated the damage in full, while the other refused even to consider the claim.

Another useful strategy is to consider the paperwork required by an insurance company to be submitted with each claim, as well as the procedure of damage evaluation. An insurance company that requires you to present a long list of supporting documents, or insists on complex third party damage evaluation is likely to find a reason to decline your claim. On the other hand, if a simple receipt presentation is sufficient, the insurance company may be easier to deal with and more likely to collect your compensation from.