Bridging the Underwriting Data Gap for Habitational Property Risks

June 18, 2025 / 2 min read

The commercial habitational insurance market faces a critical challenge: Underwriters need better data to assess and price apartments and condominium properties accurately but lack a comprehensive and efficient solution to deliver the insights needed.

modern-condominium-buildings

This $22 billion premium segment—representing roughly 7% of U.S. commercial lines—has seen losses climb an average of 10% annually over the past five years.

Rising storm claims and deteriorating loss ratios have pushed some carriers to exit the space entirely or restrict coverage to excess and surplus lines markets. Effective underwriting of these complex properties demands a faster and more efficient, data-driven approach.

Listening to the market

Working with our clients and employing underwriting best practices, we've identified the most significant pain points in the habitational space:

Maintenance visibility: Understanding the scope and recency of property maintenance or renovations
Recreational exposure detection: Detecting pools, playgrounds, and other recreational risks
Mixed-use complexities: Flagging the presence of business exposures
Building intelligence: Capturing key building characteristics

Introducing a new solution: The Commercial Habitational Report

Verisk’s new Commercial Habitational Report, available via ProMetrix^®, can help fill the data gap with the deeper property insights you need to make confident underwriting decisions, without the expense and delays of physical inspections. The report provides:

Permit data insights into the recency and scope of a structure’s maintenance and upkeep, sourced from ground-truth permit data
Recreational exposures: Tuned to detect specific habitational exposures such as pools, playgrounds, and sports courts using aerial imagery analytics
Business occupancy data: Operational details with NAICS codes provided by LightSpeed^® Small Commercial
ProMetrix 5 Core Attributes: ISO construction class, year built, square footage, number of stories, primary building use

Moving Forward Together

Your expertise combined with our data creates a powerful foundation for more precise risk assessment and competitive positioning in this challenging market. The Commercial Habitational Report empowers you to streamline workflows, reduce cycle times, and make better-informed decisions about habitational properties.

Ready to transform your habitational underwriting process? Contact a Verisk representative to discover how next-level property intelligence can strengthen your competitive advantage.