Lessors Risk Insurance in Michigan

They can. We did not find a standard fire policy printed in Michigan’s insurance code, so the vacancy and unoccupancy language on each building came in with the form its carrier filed rather than out of a statute section. Put the two declarations pages side by side and read both conditions before the seasonal building locks up for the winter. Where the code search stopped is our limit, not Michigan’s answer — so the form in your hand is the text that governs.

Not by what it was built for. The submission is read on what happens inside it now — what each tenant actually does, how the spaces are separated from one another, what the heating and electrical service looks like after the conversion, and whether the building is sprinklered. Old industrial shells are common enough on Michigan schedules that none of this is exotic, but the description has to match the use. A classification carried over from the building’s first life is the kind of error that surfaces at a claim.

On two different policies, potentially. Your property coverage answers for the roof and the structure; the tenant’s own coverage answers for their goods. What decides whether you owe them anything is liability — whether the leak traces to something you were responsible for maintaining — and that is a general liability question, not a property one. Michigan roofs take a long, loaded winter, so document the inspections and repairs you do. A maintenance record is the difference between a leak and a neglected roof.

The lot, the walkways and the lighting are usually yours to keep, and they are where an owner’s liability claims actually come from. Traffic in and out of an arterial site raises the count of people crossing ground you control, and a Michigan winter puts ice on that ground repeatedly rather than once. Get the snow and ice contract in writing, keep the service records, and read what the leases say about who clears what. Vague lease language leaves the exposure with you.

You are. Michigan regulates insurance alongside banks, credit unions and other financial services in a single agency, the Department of Insurance and Financial Services, so there is no separate insurance department to find. Its link sits in the Sources block on this page. That is where a producer’s license is verified before money changes hands, and where a complaint about the company writing your building would be heard. The name is the only confusing part of it.

Ordinance or law coverage does, if you bought it. A standard property policy pays to put back what was there; it does not automatically pay the extra cost of building to a rule that came in after the wall did. Michigan’s freeze-and-thaw cycle works steadily on older masonry, so this comes up on buildings that have never had a fire. Check whether the coverage is on the schedule and at what limit, because on an old building the gap is usually the expensive part.