Rental Property Investor · Mount Clemens, MI · Member since 2016 · 110 posts · 18 votes
Hey there,
I'm looking for a duplex, triplex or quad to house hack and a mortgage lender advised me to make sure that when I find something, or even before I do, to figure out what homeowner's insurance premiums are. As for property inspectors, he said I should get on that now, so that once I do find something, I'm not settling for less by rushing to find someone.
I'm planning to do just that. This week I'm going to start looking up property inspectors in my area and homeowner's insurance providers. That way I'll be able to compare options and at least have providers narrowed down when I find a property.
Before I do, I wanted to ask you all what questions you think are important to ask, and what I should and shouldn't look for in both (property inspectors and homeowner's insurance providers). Obviously a multifamily property is not the same as a single family; plus it won't be a straight single family residence or investment property ... it'll be a mix with me living in it. I want to make sure that since house hacking is a bit unique in the grand scheme of things, I don't stumble on any unwelcome surprises on the inspection or insurance end.
With regard to the insurance side of things, I would recommend setting up a relationship with a solid broker. They can shop multiple insurers, and run price modeling on whatever you are looking to do to find a good fit.
Having someone that is knowledgeable in the area that you can bounce questions off of helps a ton.
Personally, I do business with Goosehead Insurance. The agent I use for the time being hasn't failed me yet.
If property inspections are posted online as they are most often done in Silicon Valley, a good place to get names of potential inspectors would be to look at who is doing the property inspections shown by the disclosures.
You will probably have a slightly different value system than a listing agent because you will need to get an inspection done quickly.
Generally property inspectors are licensed and insured. What they look at is fairly comprehensive but does not include inspecting anything that is not visible (insides of walls or even the outside of a wall in a garage that is blocked by items stored in the garage)
How the inspectors findings are presented varies quite a bit. Some inspectors seem to make everything sound like a big risk item, others are very neutral letting the reader judge every risk.