Real Estate Investor Insurance: How to Protect Your Investment Properties | Alper Behar

Alper Behar (00:00)
That’s exactly correct. So basically, and it’s a challenge for your audience, find something that you cannot buy when you need it. You can find you can buy everything you want if you pay enough money. You can pay enough to ride in the best airplane you want to. You can pay enough, no whatever you want. That’s the only thing you in this life is insurance. You cannot buy at the day that you need insurance.

Joseph Crooms (01:57)
Hey everyone. Welcome to Investor Fuel Real Estate Pros Podcast. I’m your host, Joseph Crooms. Today I’m joined by someone I’ve been looking forward to chatting with. His name is Alper Behar. He’s going to talk to you about what he does. He’s going to talk about his niche, how he’s related to real estate. And so we’re going to jump right into it. So I think our listeners are going to take away something away from how you’re approaching business. So Alper, before we jump in, say hello to everybody. Hello. All right. So first of all, Alper, for people who may not be familiar with your world, give us the short version. What’s your main focus these days? What markets are you operating in?

Alper Behar (02:38)
We are an independent insurance agency. We are offering insurance policies for residential properties and commercial properties, whether they are people living in or shopping centers or apartment buildings or single-family houses.

Joseph Crooms (02:51)
Thank you. Alper, in the pre-podcast, you talked about, all the premiums that insurance companies are the same. Is that correct?

Alper Behar (02:58)
Not insurance companies, but the insurance company quotes a premium, it will be the exact same premium for every agent. So if you are for example, if you are getting a premium for a let’s say Progressive, if you check with fifty different agents for the same unit for the same property with the same coverages, the premium will be exactly the same.

Joseph Crooms (03:19)
Thank you for that clarity. So here’s my second part of that question. What makes your business stand out?

Alper Behar (03:25)
Our business is standing out because we serve our customers with knowledge. You’ve seen my name has a CIC at the end, which is a Certified Insurance Counselor. And there are only thirty-five thousand of us nationwide. I believe there are about close to two million agents. So we are on our customers’ side, we do risk management, risk analysis. So, in simple words, we try to understand our customers’ needs, the property details, and then we prepare the policy accordingly to make sure that when the bad day happens, there is a policy that will respond and pay for the damages.

Joseph Crooms (04:03)
Well, seems like you’ve had a very interesting process. Let me ask you this question. I want to get this out the way. What is your book of business like, your portfolio looked like in the past year?

Alper Behar (04:12)
We are a generalist, so about half of my book, about fifty-five percent of my book is personal lines, that is single-family houses, condos, cars and stuff, and forty-five percent of our book is commercial, which is businesses, shopping centers, commercial buildings, commercial properties and so on.

Joseph Crooms (04:33)
And investors. Yeah. Give me an idea how much monthly would you be doing? How much is your buying monthly?

Alper Behar (04:39)
We probably do my gosh, we have about fifteen, eighteen thousand policies in the agency, so we probably do I wanna say maybe forty, fifty if if not more, new policies every month.

Joseph Crooms (05:40)
Thank you so much for sharing that. What caught my attention is, that you said that you educate. Tell me what type of education would your clients need when they come in and say, hey, I have this apartment building, I have this commercial business. What type of things do you want to find out about them and you want them to know about you first of all?

Alper Behar (05:58)
Okay, I’m gonna ask you this question and tell me what you understand with it. The first thing I tell my customers or clients when we meet, I say insurance is the only thing you can’t buy when you need TM. TM is the trademark.

Joseph Crooms (06:13)
Okay. So what does that mean to me? It can mean a lot of things, repeat your question because I want to answer the last part again. Sure.

Alper Behar (06:20)
Insurance is the only thing you cannot buy when you need it.

Joseph Crooms (06:24)
So I need it and then I’m a little too late. Is that what has that sort of answered the question?

Alper Behar (06:29)
That’s exactly correct. So basically, and it’s a challenge for your audience, find something that you cannot buy when you need it. You can find you can buy everything you want if you pay enough money. You can pay enough to ride in the best airplane you want to. You can pay enough, no whatever you want. That’s the only thing you in this life is insurance. You cannot buy at the day that you need insurance. So it’s a product or it’s a service that you have to pay upfront beforehand and design the service thinking that when something happens and I will need the insurance company to come and help me with a bag of money, they should be there and they shouldn’t be able to hide from me. They shouldn’t be able to ghost me. They shouldn’t be able to run away from me. And at that point us the agents are very important because we educate, we work with our clients, we try to understand their position, we educate them and we prepare the policies together with the insurance carriers, so we make sure the bad potential bad risks when they happen they are covered properly.

Joseph Crooms (07:37)
Thank you for that, Alper. Alper, would you say that insurance is a protective of investment or can it also be productive to add to your investment? How would you word that? How would you just explain that? If I was to ask that question.

Alper Behar (07:51)
So insurance is not a law. You don’t have to buy insurance. But if you want to protect your investment, there is a little tiny cost with it, but you can protect your investment with insurance. So some people decide not to buy insurance and self-insure, meaning that if something happens, I’ll pay out of my own pocket. Some people say if something happens I don’t care, I want somebody else pay for it. I don’t want my cash flow to be affected if something happens. And investors know very well, especially real estate investors know very well. Things happen. There will be a pipe burst, there will be a little fire somewhere, things happen.

Joseph Crooms (08:32)
Let me ask you a question. What type of conversation do you have with residential versus commercial? Can you—

Alper Behar (08:38)
So residential mostly is mortgage or lender driven. When people are tight on budget and they need to get into that house, they want to get into that house and mortgage gives them this is X amount of dollars you can afford, they try to cut corners. We are trying to educate them, cutting corners is sometimes and a lot of times, if not every time, is not the right policy. With commercial clients, they are more even though even the ones that are individual people, they are more institutionalized. So they have a process, they are more risk adverse, they are more budget adverse, they make their budgets, insurance is part of the budget. We are able to talk with them more in detail about coverages and they tend to understand the risks or manage the risks better than personal customers for residential customers. So on a commercial client they decide okay I take this much risk and I don’t want to take this risk so insurance should cover from here on. So these discussions we can do better with the commercial customers.

Joseph Crooms (10:26)
So on your difficult customer, such as the residentials, they say, nah man, I’m trying to cut corners, I’m trying to cut and what would you tell me if I say, Hey man, I’m trying to save money, I’m trying to cut corners, what can you just give me a low premium? What type of things would you bring out to me?

Alper Behar (10:40)
So we go through the coverages line item by line item. We explain to them what every coverage is. And on residential in Florida we represent thirty different companies. So we give them a list of quotes from thirty different companies. In fact, once we get the quotes we feed that into our AI. Our AI sorts them, finds the optimum and creates the message to them with hey we think this company is gonna be better for you because of these reasons. So we discussed this with the customer. Sometimes the cheapest company could be the best option. Sometimes the cheapest company will not be the best option. However, in my agency, we do not accept reducing the coverages. So if a customer is really in a very tight spot and they need to reduce coverages playing games, we refer them to our friends, other agencies. We do not underinsure anything.

Joseph Crooms (11:35)
Can you give me what some of the options may be?

Alper Behar (11:38)
So somebody is purchasing a house, let’s say round number a million dollars. Out of that million dollars, four hundred thousand dollars could be the value of the land because it’s on the water or it’s a very important place or very desirable location, and the house itself is six hundred thousand dollars. And those numbers are important for maybe important for the lender, for the buyer, etc. For us those are not important. We look at how the house was built. Is it frame construction, wooden construction, or concrete block construction, how many square feet, how many stories, etc. So we use the proprietary software from the insurance carriers to find out an estimated replacement cost. Which means if a bomb would vent or will go off in the house and the house gets destroyed, how much will it take to rebuild this house? And that’s the number we are using for our coverage. The second criteria we look at is we speak with our customers and we say, What furniture do you have? What’s your personal belongings? So with that we put a coverage based on what they tell us in case there’s a fire and they lose all their TVs and furniture and couches and stuff, how much would they need to put their life back together? And that’s also an item on the policy. The third important item is the liability. So if somebody were to get hurt at their house, a guest or somebody doing work, etcetera, how much will it take? And in Florida it’s pretty much standard, one hundred thousand or three hundred thousand dollar liabilities and we always put three hundred thousand dollar liabilities because of the society we are living in, everybody likes to get more money out of the lawsuits.

Joseph Crooms (13:27)
Absolutely. Alper, do you take depreciation into account when you write out the length of the policy?

Alper Behar (13:33)
So the policies are one-year policies. In our agency, we like to add automatic inflation increase on the policies every year. Not the depreciation, but increase. The reason being that the price of lumber changes every year or every day. The cost of labor changes every day. Even though the house is depreciated, if the house is burnt down and you need to build a new house, you will pay today’s cost. It’s not like a car insurance that you give somebody a third of the money because of the depreciation and then let them live on the street. They need to have a roof on—

Joseph Crooms (14:11)
Thank you for that, Alper. Okay, so I’ve picked your brain enough and you’ve been explaining to our audience very well. Thank you so much for that. Let me ask you this question. Now you said when I asked you about threats, you said, we don’t worry about anything. But I know every operator I know has had a moment when things just got real. Maybe a deal that went sideways. You had to pivot. Do you mind sharing one of those with us?

Alper Behar (14:36)
I was honest when I told you no, but I’m thinking was there anything that we had to pivot? No, my business is very knowledge intensive. So we are taking time when we are making policies. So I don’t remember over the last fifteen years any time that we had to say to a client, we’re sorry we missed this or sorry we had that. I don’t remember anything like that happening. Now we are not a high-performing factory. We are like a custom builder. We look at every policy. I am standing out in general that I read policies. Not many agents read policies.

Joseph Crooms (15:15)
Why is that? They figure they just gotta get to the meat of things or what is your reason why they may skip that? I think it’s very important to make sure you go over the policy with the client to make sure he understands. But can you tell me why do you think they do it?

Alper Behar (15:28)
If you have a poll on your podcast online, let’s ask the audience when was the last time they read a 125-page document?

Joseph Crooms (15:36)
I got you. Right.

Alper Behar (15:37)
It’s not fun.

Joseph Crooms (15:39)
I know, I get you. But I’m investing my money, I would think. And so I appreciate what you’re saying. I’m gonna read the policy. And if I guess you’re reading to find out, hey, some things I need to bring out to you ’cause they’re not doing their due diligence. Is that what it is?

Alper Behar (15:54)
That’s correct. I admit I’m not expecting any client to read and understand the policy because insurance language is a little different language than we are speaking today.

Joseph Crooms (16:04)
Yes.

Alper Behar (16:05)
However, the client who has not read the policy, who hasn’t understood the policy, is contractually legally bound by the policy.

Joseph Crooms (16:15)
Absolutely.

Alper Behar (16:15)
Yeah. And the only time they see the policy is when they receive the policy after they paid for it. So it’s important.

Joseph Crooms (16:23)
Or when they need something, am I correct?

Alper Behar (16:25)
Exactly. So it’s important that they put the premium, the price on the side and they are in tight connection with their agent to understand the details of the policy before they order for the policy to be issued.

Joseph Crooms (16:42)
That sounds very important. So on your commercial or residential, how many times do you check in with them on a yearly basis?

Alper Behar (16:90)
So we do check in with them every ninety days. So that makes four times at least. But in real life, because we have multiple policies with the same customers, usually we are in touch with them monthly or maybe semi-monthly or every two months, but we are in very constant communication with our customers.

Joseph Crooms (17:13)
Thank you for sharing it, Alper. That’s the kind of stuff people don’t talk about. And honestly, it’s what separates the folks who are just dabbling from the ones who stay in the game long-term, fifteen years, as you mentioned. Let me ask you: What are you focused on solving or scaling next? What’s the next real goal?

Alper Behar (17:29)
So good that you asked that. I had a gentleman come in a few weeks back and he made a very interesting analysis for our book of business for our business. And I personally believe right now that we are missing out about thirty to forty percent growth by following up offering more lines of businesses, more insurance policies to our existing popular customers. Popular customers for us means the clients that we talk very often with. So we have identified those. We separated a team member. In fact, we hired a new team member. She is in training right now. So she is going to make this outreach and get more communication with the popular clients to get more business in by pretty much by using the same client base to grow the company.

Joseph Crooms (18:20)
I have a two-part question. What is your position in the company?

Alper Behar (18:23)
Do it all.

Joseph Crooms (18:23)
CEO, CFO, what do you—

Alper Behar (18:28)
Exactly. As a small business and as an owner of a small business, as all of my peers, I have to do everything. I answer phone calls, I answer emails. I am usually the face, I am usually the one who speaks with the customers the most just because I want to make sure that everybody has the same quality service, quality funds. But I have a great team that are supporting me in the back end that when I say something somebody jumps and takes it and gets the thing done.

Joseph Crooms (19:00)
Gotcha. I understand. We’re coming to the end, but has AI when this gentleman presented it to you, has AI been useful in helping him identify this new product that you need to be rolling out?

Alper Behar (19:11)
So he may have used some AI, I’m not sure. But he was old school doing crunching numbers, Excel sheets, etcetera, which is perfect. But we do use AI a lot in our agency.

Joseph Crooms (19:23)
Okay. And what type of information—what is the new product? Or do you know what you’re gonna start picking up?

Alper Behar (19:30)
It’s not a new product. I mean don’t forget I’m an insurance agent. There’s nothing sexy about it. Right. It’s new for them, not for the agency. So if a customer has a shopping center, very likely they own a house and if you don’t have their policy for their residential home, that’s when we’re gonna go back to them and say let’s check for your residential home because we currently have thirty different insurance carriers we represent.

Joseph Crooms (19:59)
Understand. So one more question before we tell people how to get in touch with you. Who is on your team loosely? Property agents, property managers, builders? Tell me what’s made the biggest difference for you? How do you build these relationships with other people or do you do it?

Alper Behar (20:16)
So our network of referrals influencers, not direct employees but people that we hang out with, I’ve been very fortunate I have a very, very good network. I’m a member of Boca Business Builders Networking Group, but if we go one higher level, so immigration attorneys, property management firms, construction companies, real estate brokers, mortgage brokers, they all are perfect networking peers for me.

Joseph Crooms (20:46)
Thank you. I appreciate that. Hey, so I’m sorry, man. I really enjoyed this conversation with you, Alper. I know our listeners got a lot of it, but I wanted to make sure that they can keep in touch with you. So before we wrap it up, how can they reach out, connect with you, maybe collaborate or learn more about what you’re doing? What’s the best way to reach you?

Alper Behar (21:06)
I would love it. So my website is beharinsurance.com, B as in Boy, E as in Echo, H as in Hotel, A as in Alpha, R as in Romeo, Insurance spelled out dot com. My cell phone is everywhere. It’s 954-980-4000. And so they can just come or follow me on Instagram at @beharinsurance, or Facebook or X, it’s all at @beharinsurance or email [email protected], so I’m easy to reach.

Joseph Crooms (21:39)
Alper, there’s always a slowpoke, right? Somebody looking for a pen and paper. So give it to them one more time.

Alper Behar (21:45)
Okay, so my website is beharinsurance.com, B-E-H-A-R insurance.com. My cell phone is 954-980-4000. It’s all over the internet, so and I answer my phones and text messages and email [email protected] or social media it’s all the same at @beharinsurance, B as in Boy, E as in Echo, H as in Hotel, A as in Alpha, R as in Romeo. So we are on X, we are on Instagram. We do have an educational YouTube channel. It’s the same at Behar Insurance. There’s a lot of information. And also I like making videos at my clients’ places. So for our commercial clients like restaurants or businesses you can see some local businesses there. And so I would appreciate if anybody just comes and says hi.

Joseph Crooms (22:45)
Well listen, I appreciate your time today, Alper. Your story, your perspective, your philosophy. It’s one thing to have a philosophy, it’s another thing to live it out. So thank you for helping so many people, helping so many businesses, both on the commercial and the residential end. It’s been real. Thank you again for being here.

Alper Behar (23:04)
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. And please never forget insurance is the only thing you can’t buy when you need it.

Joseph Crooms (23:13)
Insurance is the only thing you can’t buy when you need it, you need to get it before you need it. I got you. All right, Alper, listen, please tell your friends about Investorfield. And for those of you tuning in, I know you got value from Alper Behar. He told you how to get in touch with him, do that. And if you need him, get it now, don’t wait till later when you needed it but you didn’t do it. So you heard it from me and you heard it from him. Make sure you subscribe. We got more conversations coming from operators just like Alper who are out there building real businesses, but helping real people. So we’ll see you at the next episode of Investorf Fuel Real Estate Pros Podcast. Alper, tell people to check you out. Thank you very much.

Alper Behar (23:57)
Hey guys, please make sure you subscribe.

Joseph Crooms (23:59)
Thank you so much, Alper.