Retail property and casualty agents are adapting to the new realities of "For Rent" signs on shop windows and foreclosure notices on home lawns. Agents who never or seldom handled vacant property are now learning the ropes and are looking for answers to some basic, as well as not so basic, questions.

"Along with providing a steady stream of vacant-property submissions, agents tend to ask us four basic questions about vacant-property placement," said Rich Gobler, assistant manager for the San Francisco Branch of Burns & Wilcox. "They want to know how we handle partial occupancy, whether we can help them get building ordinance protection, if we handle vacant property on a monoline or package basis, and if we can quote the same day," he said. "The answer to all four is 'yes.'"

Recent statistics support the view that, at least in California, home vacancies are on the rise. The U.S. Census Bureau reported that the home vacancy rate in California reached 2.8 percent, a full percentage point higher than last year. While standard carriers might insure a building only if occupancy is below a certain percentage, an excess and surplus (E&S) brokerage like Burns & Wilcox has markets that can handle any vacancy-occupancy ratio, Gobler said. Many carriers won't offer building ordinance–an add-on that covers the extra costs to repair or rebuild in compliance with current building regulations after a loss–but it is routine for Burns & Wilcox to provide a quote on the coverage. And Gobler said they can handle package or monoline coverage.