Top Tips for Fire Preparedness
Photocredit: United Public Adjusters
What You Should be Fired Up about- the importance of P&P and Insurance
Remember the old Smokey the Bear commercials, “Only YOU can prevent forest fires”? Well, consider that living in a NYC coop or condo, or even rental building with hundreds of neighbors and how just one of them could adversely affect the entire community.
While any housefire can be devastating, multiply that by the number of people living under one roof in a NYC coop or condo and imagine the possibility for disaster. We recently saw a potential catastrophe narrowly avoided.
An unauthorized person snuck up after hours to the roof deck and had a cigarette (also not allowed). They carelessly flung the cigarette butt, which eventually led to a fire on the building’s roof. A tragedy was avoided in this 200-unit building only because a neighbor across the street happened to be awake and spotted the fire in full blaze at 1:30 am.
This points to several different issues including:
House Rules: following House Rules (yes, there is a reason for them!), being responsible, and keeping the community at large in mind. Read about the “Top Reason for House Rules. ”
Insurance policy: NYC coop and condo boards typically get their insurance policy quotes from their property manager or property management firm, who acts as the intermediary between the board and the insurance broker. By law, renewal quotes have to be provided no less than 30 days prior to renewal. Having the insurance policy reviewed by another insurance broker is a great practice to double-check that your building is properly insured. If you send your current policy to us, we’ll have it professionally reviewed for you. Email it to mark@thefolsongroup.com.
Homeowners insurance: If the fire, or any other accident or damage affects their neighbors, it is often covered by homeowners insurance. In our opinion, it is best practice to require all residents to have adequate homeowners’ insurance.
Public Adjuster: The public adjuster represents coop and condo boards to ensure their water or fire damage claim is properly managed and streamlined in order to receive a speedy insurance recovery! Public adjusters are paid as a percentage of the claim, so they work hard to maximize your coop or condo’s insurance claim.
Stay safe, don’t break the house rules, review your building’s insurance policy, and use a public adjuster to help you maximize your insurance claim.
We hope you found this valuable. For other best practice articles for NYC coop and condo owners and boards, subscribe to our newsletter here.
At The Folson Group, our goal is to inspire you to run your building like a business. We enable and inspire co-op or condo board engagements to be filled with a feeling of accomplishment, excitement, meaning, happiness, and increased probability of success. Contact us here: info@thefolsongroup.com or 917-648-8154.