Dual Block Owner, Western Sydney

A long-term property investor in Western Sydney called us about two small unit blocks they owned on the same street. Both properties were on separate titles, both had the same owners listed, and both were up for renewal within a fortnight of each other.

They wanted two things: cover in place before the existing policies lapsed, and aligned renewal dates going forward so the paperwork wasn't spread across the year. Historically the blocks had sat with different insurers on different renewal cycles - a mess that had grown out of how the properties were bought at different times.

The client found us online after doing their own research, then called through to confirm we handle non-strata blocks regularly. We moved straight into a fact-find: unit counts, construction, sum insureds, claims history, tenancy mix. Both blocks were low-to-mid unit-count residential, brick and tile, owner-occupier risk with long-term tenants.

Two blocks owned by the same people on the same street is, in theory, a broker's easy win. The risk profiles are almost identical. You submit once, get terms once, bind twice.

In practice it's rarely that clean. Insurers assess each property on its own merits, and pricing can vary meaningfully even on near-identical buildings. We approached three markets we work with regularly for this type of risk - one declined both blocks on appetite, another quoted one block but not the other, and a third agreed to quote both consistently.

We asked the quoting insurer to align the renewal dates from day one so the client wouldn't be handling two separate cycles. They agreed.

The declines weren't about the properties themselves - both blocks were well-maintained, fully tenanted, and had clean claims histories. One market declined on general appetite for the unit configuration. Another was willing to quote one block but not the other, which makes no sense from a pure risk perspective but reflects how individual underwriters read submissions on their desks.

The second challenge was pricing consistency. For near-identical blocks, the client expected similar pricing. The quotes came back with slightly different premiums - in the high four-figure to low five-figure range each - reflecting small differences in the sum insured and claim history detail.

We prepared a plain-English summary for the client so the difference made sense: unit count, building sum insured, and the specific loss-of-rent cap drove the gap. Transparency matters when you're placing multiple policies in parallel.

Both blocks placed with CGU on aligned renewal dates. Individual premiums landed in the high four-figure to low five-figure range each, with matching excess and loss-of-rent terms across both policies.

There's a meaningful admin reduction when you consolidate properties like this. The client told us afterwards that managing two separate insurers across two separate renewals had been one of the friction points they wanted to fix for years.

Multi-block owners in the same suburb aren't uncommon - small-scale portfolio builders who've accumulated properties over time. If that sounds like your situation, get in touch. We consolidate blocks onto single-insurer, single-renewal programmes regularly.