Vacant home insurance for restoration properties
Steadily provides vacant property insurance and renovation coverage for landlords working on unoccupied properties, whether you're restoring a rental between tenants, renovating before listing, or even fixing up a property you plan to sell instead of rent.
What is a vacant or restoration property?
A vacant property is any home or building that's unoccupied for an extended period; typically 30 to 60 days or more, depending on your insurance policy. This includes rental properties between tenants, homes you've inherited but haven't decided what to do with yet, or investment properties you're preparing to list for sale.
Standard homeowners insurance and even many landlord insurance policies exclude or severely limit coverage once a property sits empty, leaving you exposed to risks like vandalism, theft, and weather damage during the vacancy period.
A property under renovation falls into a similar category, especially if the work involves significant repairs or restoration that make the home temporarily uninhabitable. Whether you're updating a kitchen between tenants, restoring property damage from a previous incident, or doing a complete gut renovation before renting or selling, traditional insurance carriers often won't provide adequate coverage during construction.
Vacant home insurance and renovation insurance fill this gap by protecting your investment while the property is unoccupied and undergoing improvements, covering perils that typical policies exclude and ensuring you're not left financially vulnerable during the transition period.
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How vacant property insurance protects your investment
Vacant home insurance protects against risks that standard policies exclude once a property sits empty. This includes vandalism and theft, weather damage like frozen pipes, fire and smoke damage, and liability if someone is injured on your property.
For properties under renovation, coverage extends to construction-related risks, protecting both the existing structure and improvements you're making. These are usually smaller-scale renovations; larger, ground-up projects may require builder's risk insurance.
Traditional rental property policies typically reduce coverage or deny claims after 30 to 60 days of vacancy, but specialized vacant and renovation coverage maintains protection throughout your project.
Steadily covers light to moderate renovations on properties in transition, whether you're doing a fix and flip, restoring an inherited property, or updating a rental between tenants. Coverage includes property damage protection and liability with increased limits given construction activity, plus flexibility around whether you ultimately rent or sell after completing work.
What affects the cost of vacant home insurance?
Vacant home insurance costs more than a standard landlord policy, and for a straightforward reason: an empty property is a riskier one. With no one around to catch a leak, a break-in, or a small fire early, insurers charge a higher base rate, and that rate climbs the longer the home sits vacant. If the property is under active renovation, the scope of that work is its own factor, and you’ll often need builders risk coverage for the materials and the work in progress.
Security and how you manage the property help set the final number. Alarms, boarding, regular occupancy checks, and a clear plan for the site all signal lower risk to an underwriter. The length of the policy term matters too, since vacant coverage is often written in shorter blocks. To keep the cost manageable, keep the property monitored and secured, document your renovation timeline, and move back to a standard landlord policy as soon as a tenant is in place and the home is occupied again.
We cover a wide range of risks, or you can choose a limited set of coverages for a lower premium
Riot & civil commotion
Steadily’s landlord insurance covers property damage from riots and civil commotion, including broken windows, structural fires, and looted common areas, so the repair costs don’t fall entirely on you. Documentation connecting the damage to the civil unrest is required.
Vandalism & burglary
Steadily covers malicious damage to your rental from vandalism and break-ins: broken doors and windows, defaced surfaces, damaged fixtures and appliances. A police report is typically required to file the claim.
Loss of rent
When a covered event makes the unit temporarily uninhabitable, Steadily’s loss of rent coverage replaces the income you’d lose while repairs are underway, whether the cause is a fire, a burst pipe, or storm damage.
Storm and hail
Steadily covers storm and hail damage to the structure of your property, including roof punctures, broken windows, wind-torn siding, and fallen debris, as well as damage from extreme wind and tornadoes.
Water
For sudden water damage events such as burst pipes, plumbing failures and appliance overflow, Steadily covers the structural repairs and lost rental income if the unit can’t be occupied while the work is done. Flood damage from rising water requires a separate policy.
Legal liability
Landlord liability insurance pays medical bills, legal defense, and settlements when a tenant or visitor is injured at your rental and holds you responsible. It's built into every Steadily landlord policy in all 50 states with $300,000 to $2 million per occurrence, typically adding $200 to $400 a year to the bundled premium.
Fire
Steadily covers structural fire damage, smoke damage, personal property you own at the unit, and lost rental income while repairs are underway. That includes fires started in the kitchen, by the wiring, by a tenant, or by a wildfire nearby.
How long can a house be vacant before insurance is affected?
Most standard homeowners and landlord policies begin limiting or excluding coverage once a property has been empty for 30 to 60 days, though the exact window varies by insurer and policy. After that point, claims for vandalism, theft, or water damage can be reduced or denied outright. If you expect a rental to sit empty between tenants, during a sale, or through a renovation for longer than a month, a dedicated vacant property policy keeps you protected through the gap.
Is it more expensive to insure a vacant house?
Usually, yes. An empty property is a higher risk to insurers because problems like a burst pipe, a break-in, or a small fire can go unnoticed for weeks, so vacant home insurance typically costs more than a standard landlord or homeowners policy. How much more depends on how long the home will sit empty, its condition, its location, and whether any renovation work is underway. Even so, the premium is far less than paying out of pocket after a claim gets denied on a home that was left empty.
What's the difference between fix and flip and fix and rent?
Fix and flip means you purchase a property, renovate it, then sell it for profit without ever renting it out. Fix and rent, which can be a part of the BRRRR method (Buy, Rehab, Rent, Refinance, Repeat) involves renovating a property with the intention of keeping it as a long-term rental to generate ongoing income. Both strategies require vacant property insurance during the renovation phase since traditional landlord insurance and homeowners policies won't adequately cover properties under construction or sitting empty. Steadily covers properties during light to moderate renovations regardless of whether you plan to flip the property for sale or rent it out afterward, giving you flexibility to pivot your strategy based on market conditions without worrying about coverage gaps.
How does vacant property insurance differ from builder's risk insurance?
Builders risk insurance covers major construction projects like ground-up builds, complete renovations, or significant structural work with multiple contractors. Vacant property insurance is designed for properties sitting empty or undergoing light to moderate renovations, like updating a rental between tenants or restoring an inherited property before sale. If you're doing substantial construction, builder's risk is the right fit. For vacant properties or lighter renovation work, vacant property insurance provides the coverage you need. Steadily can help you get a quote for either type of coverage depending on your project scope.
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We cover a wide range of risks, or you can choose a limited set of coverages for a lower premium
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