This question comes up occasionally. The importance of the answer is that ISO Homeowners’ policy forms include vacant land for liability automatically. So if you have a piece of ground, it may automatically have liability coverage without any extra expense and without you having to do anything. If the land is not considered vacant, then you will have to add the property location to your policy or take out a second policy to obtain coverage.
Few plots of ground would be considered vacant per the ISO definition, which is “any land on which there exist no man made structures”. Basically the land has to be as God made it. There can be no roads, fences, poles, structures, etc.
If you have vacant land and you think you have coverage, you need to discuss it with your agent to determine if you do.
Is this land vacant? From this vantage point, I would say yes. It appears to be as God intended with no manmade features.
Is this land vacant? This is the same property as above, but from a different angle. Look close and in the middle of the picture, you can see a telephone box & there is one fence post, which I assume is to protect the telephone box. Now this land is not “vacant” and would have to be listed as a location to be covered by your homeowners’ policy.
Court cases have upheld the insurance companies definition of “vacant land”.
Travelers Indemnity Co. v. Holman, 330 F.2d 142, 5th Cir. Tex. (1964), vacant land requires that the property be unoccupied, unused and “in its natural state.”
In De Lisa v. Amica Mutual Ins. Co., 59 A.D.2d 380, 399 N.Y.S.2d 909 (1977), a child was injured in an abandoned structure on land owned by the insured. The court ruled that vacant land meant that there was no structure or building on the land, so there was no coverage.
In O’ Connor v. Safeco Ins. Co., 352 So. 2d 1244, Fla. Dist. Ct. App. 1st Dist. (1977), property was determined not to be vacant because a surfaced road went through it.
Court case information was obtained from www.iiaba.net.
Do you have vacant land?
