About Us
The specialty desk for historic property.
Historic Building Insurance is the heritage-property division of Contractors Choice Agency — built to place the landmark, listed, and period buildings the standard market can't value and won't write.
Who we are
A specialty division of Contractors Choice Agency
Historic Building Insurance is the heritage-property specialty division of Contractors Choice Agency (CCA), an independent insurance agency founded in 2005 and headquartered in Chandler, AZ. CCA was built around hard-to-place property and casualty risk — the accounts standard carriers wave off because they don't fit a tidy underwriting box. Historic and landmark buildings are the purest version of that problem, so we created a dedicated desk for them.
We are an independent agency, which means we don't answer to a single carrier's appetite. We carry the agency's National Producer Number (8608479) and are licensed in all 50 states, so wherever your building stands — a courthouse square in the Midwest, a brownstone row on the East Coast, an adobe mission in the Southwest — we can quote and place coverage for it.
Our work is narrow on purpose. We are not a general-lines agency that happens to take an old building now and then. We spend our days inside the specialty and surplus-lines markets that price period construction, public assembly use, and active restoration correctly, and we bring that fluency to every property we touch.
Why we focus here
The gap in the standard market
Most owners of a historic building eventually hear some version of the same answer from a standard carrier: a flat decline, a quote that values the building like a tract home, or a policy that quietly settles on depreciated cash value. None of that is malice — it's that historic property breaks the assumptions ordinary insurance is built on. Three failures show up again and again.
Carriers can't value period architecture
There is no modern replacement-cost equivalent for hand-carved stone, old-growth timber, lath-and-plaster, or original leaded glass. Standard rating engines have no line item for craftsmanship that hasn't been produced commercially in a century, so they either decline the building or insure it at a fraction of what restoration would actually cost.
They won't write ordinance-or-law correctly
When a 100-year-old building is damaged, current code forces upgrades — sprinklers, wiring, structural reinforcement, ADA access — that the original construction never contemplated. On a historic property those code-driven costs frequently exceed the direct damage. Most standard policies exclude them or cap them so low the limit is meaningless.
They default to actual cash value
Faced with a risk they can't model, standard carriers fall back on actual-cash-value settlement, which depreciates an irreplaceable building down to salvage numbers. An owner discovers the gap only at claim time — exactly when the building is already gone and the money to rebuild it isn't there.
The markets we access
Surplus lines and heritage carriers
The reason we can place buildings the standard market declines is simple: we don't work the standard market for them. We place historic and landmark property through surplus-lines (excess & surplus) carriers and specialty heritage programs that exist precisely for risk the admitted market won't take. These carriers have underwriters who have spent decades pricing old construction, unreinforced masonry, public-assembly occupancy, and restoration exposure — and they write the endorsements that make a historic policy actually work.
Surplus lines carry more flexibility than admitted paper: agreed value without a coinsurance trap, restoration-cost settlement, generous ordinance-or-law limits, vacancy permits, and builders-risk for an active rehabilitation. That flexibility is the entire point — it's what lets a 19th-century church, a National Register hotel, or a landmark courthouse be insured for what rebuilding it would truly cost rather than what a generic formula spits out.
As an independent agency we shop these markets against each other on your behalf, comparing terms and not just price. We carry the relationships and the binding authority to move quickly, and we stay with the account through restoration projects and renewals rather than handing it off once the policy is bound.
How we help
Coverage engineered for irreplaceable buildings
Every policy we structure is aimed at one outcome: that a covered loss actually funds the restoration of your building, to the standard a historic property demands. The pieces that get there are the same pieces the standard market omits.
Agreed value & restoration cost
We fix the insured amount up front and write restoration-cost settlement, so a covered loss is rebuilt with period-appropriate materials and methods — not depreciated to a cheaper modern version of the building.
Ordinance-or-law, properly sized
Code-upgrade limits scaled to the building's true reconstruction cost, including historic-district and preservation-ordinance compliance — the coverage that decides whether a landmark is rebuilt or demolished.
Vacancy & restoration provisions
Vacancy permits, builders-risk and course-of-construction terms, and partial-occupancy provisions so a building stays protected through capital campaigns, rehabilitation, and the transition back into use.
Tax-credit & grant-funded projects
Coverage structured to satisfy the insurance requirements that come with historic tax credits and preservation grants, aligned to the Secretary of the Interior's Standards where they apply.
- Landmark, listed & National Register buildings
- Historic churches & houses of worship
- Bed & breakfasts and historic inns
- Museums, cultural & commercial historic buildings
- Properties vacant or under active restoration
- Restoration & preservation contractors
Talk to a historic-property specialist
Tell us about your building — its age, construction, register or landmark status, use, and any restoration plans — and we'll value it correctly and shop the specialty markets that write it. Free, no-obligation quote.
Contractors Choice Agency · 12220 E Riggs Road Suite #105, Chandler, AZ 85249 · Mon–Fri 8am–5pm MST (AZ)
Protect what can never be rebuilt the same way twice.
Talk to a historic-property specialist about agreed value, ordinance-or-law, and restoration coverage for your landmark building. Free, no-obligation quote.
Licensed in all 50 states · Specialty heritage carriers · Mon–Fri 8am–5pm MST (AZ)