Mixed buildings are ordinary in an older commercial city: retail at street level and residences above. That building is neither a house nor a store, and insuring it as either is the usual mistake.
A mixed-use building needs a form that contemplates both. A landlord policy alone generally will not.
Three things about a building with two jobs.
A landlord policy is written for dwellings. Introduce commercial tenancy on the ground floor and the form no longer describes the building. What is needed is a commercial package or a mixed-use form that contemplates both occupancies, and the proportion of each affects which one.
What happens downstairs matters upstairs. A restaurant, a workshop or anything with a fryer or a kiln changes the fire exposure for the residents above and for the carrier assessing the building. The tenant mix is the first question an underwriter asks.
Residential tenants bring habitability duties; commercial tenants bring lease obligations of a different kind. The owner carries both, and the liability limit on a residential landlord policy was not set with a public shopfront in mind.
Both halves of the property.
Proportion decides which form fits.
Cooking, welding and chemicals all change the risk.
A shopfront brings the public to your building.
Tell us the split between commercial and residential and what the shop does.
We place mixed-use buildings on a form that covers both halves.
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