Ottawa Real Estate Investors Organization

The challenge:

I am in the process of a multi-property purchase in Quebec. As a condition for the mortgage, they require insurance. The challenge has been that I live in Ontario and the properties are in Quebec and most insurance companies wanted to have the home insurance and investment property insurance with the same company. Insurance brokers tend to be registered in one province only. So the Ontario insurance brokers could did not cover properties in Quebec and the Quebec brokers wanted my residence in Quebec.

The possible solutions:

There are SOME insurance companies that operate in both provinces. The properties were already insured with one company under the existing owner and the company (Intact) agreed to continue to insure the properties as long as I moved my primary residence insurance to them. However, the same broker could not insure in Ontario and refered me to Intact that referred me to a local broker for house insurance.

I was using Wawanesa for house insurance and found that they also insure in Quebec and were willing to take on the properties, but they did not sell through brokers in Quebec and you had to deal with them directly. So basically, get house insurance through a broker for Wawanesa in Ontario and then call the 1-800 number to do the rest by phone.

Recommendaton:

I dealt with Paul Landry Jr at Paul Landry Insurance and found out that he is registered in BOTH provinces. So if you are living in one province and investing in the other, you might want to deal with someone that is registered in both. It is a lot easier than the running around I had to do , to get to where I needed to be.

Happy Investing!
- Babette