General Liability Insurance
General liability insurance provides financial protection against the most common types of accidents that occur while running a business, such as a client slip & fall, accident property damage or accusations of advertising harm.
General liability insurance provides broad coverage for your business by providing funds for medical bills, legal defenses costs and court settlements. Regardless of whether or not you are in the wrong, general liability insurance provides the peace-of-mind needed to focus on running your business.
Why Real Estate Professionals Need General Liability Insurance
Most Common Claims:
Slip & Fall
Your client visits your office to discuss their upcoming home purchase. They slip and fall, injuring themselves in the process. They sue you for medical costs.
Property Damage
While showing homes to your buyer clients, an antique vase is accidentally knocked off a table and broken. The seller holds you responsible to cover the cost of replacing the vase.
Advertising Harm, Libel or Slander
You accidentally use a trademarked slogan in your advertising, and get sued by a major corporation for trademark infringement. Or your employee bad mouths a client online and they sue you for damages.
How General Liability Insurance Protects You:
Provide an Expert Attorney
When you are sued, you will be connected with an expert attorney to defend your business.
Pay Legal Fees & Defense Costs
Lawsuits can be very costly, even if you are not in the wrong. General liability may pay for your legal & defense costs.
Pay Court Judgment or Settlement
If you are sued and lose, or reach a settlement prior to trial, your general liability policy may provide funds for medical costs, court judgments or plaintiff settlements.
Attention Brokers: General Liability Insurance also Covers the Actions of Your Agents!
Please note that the insurer is not obligated to pay your losses if you are dishonest, intentionally commit fraud, act with malicious intent or willingly violate the law.
Please read the policy terms for a full disclosure.
Who Needs General Liability Insurance
Nearly every real estate professional can benefit from the protection of a general liability policy. Whether you are handling only a few transactions per year or you run the highest volume team in your area, protecting your business should be a top priority. When your livelihood is on the line, it is important you get insurance coverage that is custom tailored for your business. RealShield Insurance specializes in insurance coverage for real estate professionals, which means we offer policies that provide protection custom tailored for the unique needs of real estate agents, brokers and property management companies.
Difference Between E&O and General Liability Insurance
E&O Insurance protects your business if you are sued for performing your real estate services negligently (even if you haven’t made an actual mistake) and covers issues related to contracts, disclosures, fiduciary duty, and human error. General Liability protects your business from claims of bodily injury, property damage and advertising injury.
It’s strongly recommended to combine a General Liability Insurance with an E&O Insurance policy to maximize your protection and save costs. This helps reduce gaps in liability and keep you and your business protected.
Get General Liability Insurance
RealShield Insurance can provide you with E&O insurance and general liability insurance to protect your real estate business. You can choose to get your policy 100% online through our website or you can call our team of experts for advice.
We insure individual real estate brokers & agents, real estate brokerage firms, and property management firms across Texas. Our E&O policies start at $22.50 per month and our general liability policies start at $29.17 per month. You can purchase them individually or bundle them right on our easy-to-navigate online system. You can request an instant quote on our website.
General Liability Insurance FAQs
We just need a few basic points of information about your real estate business, which takes less than 5 minutes. This includes your payroll projections for the next 12 months, how many people are on your staff and the types of properties you transact or manage. Get an instant quote right on our website!
General liability is not required by law for real estate professionals in Texas but is highly recommended by the National Association of Realtors (NAR), Texas Association of Realtors (TAR) and the Small Business Administration (SBA) for all business sizes.
General liability insurance varies in price based primarily on the size of the real estate firm’s payroll. The higher the payroll cost, which includes agent commissions, generally the higher the cost of insurance. This is the key indicator in determining how much risk your staff encounters in the field in a given year. Other minor variables such as transaction types, office location and other items may impact the premium cost too.
Bodily injury and property damage claims are typically significant in cost. Between the defense cost and the amount the plaintiff is requesting for damages, these claims can quickly add up to six figures. While choosing which general liability policy is right for you, we recommend you consider the types of properties you transact, how often you do business, how many third parties your business interacts with on a daily basis. Our $1M policy starts at $29.17 per month ($350 annually), and actually some real estate businesses qualify for $2M for the same cost depending on their risk profile. We offer a range of coverage including $300,000, $500,000, $1M and $2M. All of our General Liability policies have a $0 deductible. If you are looking for personal advice, give us a call!
Workers’ compensation:
- It does not cover any obligation you may have under a workers’ comp policy. We do cover third party claims against your business and against your staff, but not your staff’s claims against your business.
Intent to injure:
- It does not cover you for any act that occurs with the intent to injure. This includes personal and advertising injuries if you knew your actions were false or violated the rights of others.
Outside the policy period:
- The act of the claim must take place during your purchased policy period.
Known claims and circumstances:
- It does not cover your business for any claim that is a result of any circumstances you knew about prior to the start of your first policy with us. We require you to acknowledge you are not aware of any pending claims for the policy to be valid.
Personally identifiable information:
- It does not cover your failure to protect any personally identifiable information that is in your care. This includes client sensitive documents that are common in real estate including but not limited to SSN numbers, client financials, copies of ID’s and much more.
Professional services:
- It does not cover any professional services performed by you, such as the actual fiduciary duty, negligence, duty of care. These types of risks can be covered as part of our Professional Liability (E&O) Policy.
Vehicles and boats:
- It does not cover any claims arising out of the ownership or use of an automobile or a watercraft.
Your owned property
- It does not cover claims for damage to property you own. However, protection for your own business equipment can be purchased as part of our Business Owners Policy.
Making a claim is easy with us! If you become aware of a potential claim, you can provide written notice online which includes:
- the identity of the potential claimant
- the identity of the person(s) who allegedly committed the Wrongful Act
- the date of the alleged Wrongful Act
- specific details of the alleged Wrongful Act
- any written notice from the potential claimant describing the Wrongful Act.
In a typical insurance policy, once the potential claim is accepted, you will pay your deductible and the insurance claim team will diligently defend the claim, which includes all the costs up to the policy limit. However, our general liability policies have a zero deductible, which means our policies start covering you right away, before you pay any deductible out of pocket!
You can easily add coverage for business property and equipment to your General Liability policy. Examples include computers, printers, furniture and many more items. Our pricing ranges from $7.50 to $37.50 per month for $5,000-$25,000 of coverage. The deductible for business property and equipment is $500.
Complete the online quoting process for the business activity that you are most active in (based on gross revenue). Once that quote is generated online, call (800) 598-5598 to speak with our team. We will manually add the second business activity, which typically costs around 10% in additional premium.
Many real estate professionals get sued for situations in which they are 100% innocent. Unfortunately, they often get sued by the clients they trust most including friends and family. We issue policies that cover the legal defense costs up to your policy limit in all situations. The minimal cost of coverage per month far outweighs the disruption of a lawsuit to your day-to-day real estate work. Many of our online competitors have minimal defense cost coverage included in their policies, so be careful!
Yes, our system will keep track of your renewal date so you don’t have to worry about it! If your policy is eligible for renewal, you will receive a billing notice 60-90 days prior to the new policy’s effective date.
We strongly recommend adding general liability insurance coverage to your E&O insurance policy. The two types of coverage help maximize your protection. Additionally, by bundling them together – you can save 10% or more!
If you own investment properties in addition to providing real estate services, we recommend you call us before completing an instant quote on our website. Our standard policies do not include coverage for your investment properties but our team can provide other policy options for your particular situation.
Many commercial and residential clients would not consider working with a real estate professional that doesn’t carry business insurance coverage. Experienced clients understand that if there is a problem with the transaction, they need to be working with not only a licensed professional, but an insured professional.