Your apartment community is not only an investment for you, but, for your tenants, is their home. Severe damage to your apartment community, due to a catastrophic loss can be devastating for all those involved. A catastrophe, can either be natural disasters or have a manmade cause such as a fire or vandalism.

With tenant regulations and maintenance requirements, you can take active steps to keep the threat of catastrophic property loss due to manmade catastrophes to a minimum. Now, is the time to begin mitigating the inevitable risk that manmade disasters pose in order to keep tenants safe and your property protected.

The apartment community specialists at Top Floor Insurance recommend implementing these top three best practices to prevent catastrophic fire property loss.

• Installing Firestops – these devices can be installed on stove tops to prevent a fire from sparking and spreading. Educating tenants on the proper use of them would also be advised to ensure they are reducing the risk of fire as much as possible.
• Prohibit balcony grilling – as the summer months approach, it is best practice to limit the use of grills on balconies. You may consider installing grills around your apartment community and encouraging tenants to use these grills instead of a personal grill in or directly outside of their apartment. Unattended grills can spark a fire that can quickly spread throughout the entire apartment building.
• Implementing indoor smoking policies – it is estimated that, on average, 7,600 fires are started each year because of a lit cigarette. This may account for less than 2% of all fire sources, but translates to $327 million in property damage. The good news is, fires started by cigarettes are 100% preventable. Implementing and enforcing no indoor smoking or setting up designated outdoor smoking areas are practical ways to mitigate this fire risk. This helps to contain the possible risk of fires being started from tenants by improperly disposed of cigarettes.

At Top Floor Insurance, we are committed to keeping property owners, like you well informed. Implementing the mentioned best practices can help to safeguard your property from catastrophic loss. By using these strategies, apartment community owners have been able to reduce their insurance premiums, saving them BIG money each year. If you are unsure how much catastrophic property loss coverage your current policy has, or if you’d like to discuss more ways that you can protect your apartment community from fires, contact us at 404-266-3218.