When's the last time you reviewed your home owner's policy?

[hedgehog]

I just had a long discussion with my husband about what possible weather disasters could strike us. For example, if we got 3" of rain in an hour, what would the basement look like? What about snow loads on the roof? Could the road out front be undercut? ( There is a 60' drop-off across the road to the Oswego River.) We will be going through our home owner's policy line-by-line before we renew this August.


So, roughly, where do you stand on your homeowner's oe renter's policy?

[flvegan]

1. When I renewed mine in December, I went over mine carefully.

[hedgehog]

2. My husband is a farm boy who grew up on Eighteen Mile Creek

in Erie County. Most of the time, the creek is about 2" deep, but it's moved a good 20' in the last 30 years. He is very aware of what creeks can do when it rains! I doubt most people have any notion of how rivers can rise.

[madeline_con]

3. A couple of issues you've raised have been visited upon us.

We lost 1/2 our roof to Hurricane Frances, so we had the flooding inside.

Recently, a guy pretty much parked a dump truck on the fire hydrant out front, causing a major wash out, requiring the replacement of the end of our driveway (paid for by the city, BTW).

Sometimes, it's good that we have certain experiences. :shrug:

[hedgehog]

7. The water damage inside can cause a lot of parsing. Water that falls

from the sky is generally covered. Water that travels over the ground to get to your house generally isn't. I don't know about water that fills your basement if the sump pump fails.

[madeline_con]

16. I have to say, we were lucky in some respects...

We have tarazzo floors throughout, which is great, no soggy carpet to deal with, or the inherent odor carpeted homes can develop.

Our walls are plaster, so we didn't have to replace drywall, just the baseboards.

Our roof underlay is cypress, and resists rot and bugs.

Living in 50 year old home has its advantages. We count our blessings.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

4. What homeowner's policy? n/t

[hedgehog]

5. You should have renter's coverage for fire and theft.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

14. Why? I own my own home

in the sticks, where there is no fire department. Can't get homeowner's insurance.

[hedgehog]

17. We ended up buying through a local mutual insurance group because

the national companies red-lined our barn. (Can't blame them - too many people were letting an abandoned barn collapse, then using the money to put up a 1 car garage.)

We have fire coverage because we have a volunteer company and we're on city water.


Not to rub it in , but people around here are constantly complaining about high taxes. The town pays the volunteer comapny's costs. I wonder how many of my neighbors would trade lower taxes for no fire insurance?

[Semi_subversive]

6. I work for the CA Dept. of Insurance

I learned to review it on a regular basis after learning of the horror stories.

[hedgehog]

9. The other factor to be checked out is "replacement value". We had an

automatic increase every year, but about two years ago our agent reviewed local replacement costs and put a big jump on our policy.

[AlCzervik]

8. about a year ago. I added some more coverage.

[CoffeeCat]

10. Last week...

My husband and I reviewed everything with our agent.

I was intrigued by something that I didn't realize about our homeowners coverage. People need to know
if they are covered for replacement costs, or just the value of the home. Let's say your home is worth
$200,000. If you are covered for $200,000 will that be enough to REPLACE your entire home???

If there is a disaster, sometimes labor and material costs are more expensive--due to high demand and shortage
of materials. This could hike up the replacement cost of your home. So $200,000 might not rebuild you an
entire house. You might be short $30k or $50k or even more...so, and that could be devastating.

I didn't realize that. Others who are much smarter than me, might all ready have realized this. But
I didn't and I wanted to point it out to others.

It's important, if you don't know--to ask your agent if you're covered for the VALUE of your home or REPLACEMENT
COSTS.

[AlCzervik]

11. i ended up reviewing mine because my neighbor's house burned down and he

had a really bad time with his insurance company, after hearing his story i called my agent.

[MindPilot]

15. Make sure you are covered for code compliance upgrades too

That is especially important if you have an older home particularly in regards to things like setback regulations.

For example, one wall of my garage is on the property line. If it were to burn down and have to be rebuilt, it would be prohibited from being rebuilt within six feet of a property line. In my case that would more than double the cost of reconstruction because the entire structure would have to be relocated.

And it's not just the house itself. Are you covered for loss of use? Do you have adequate coverage for all your stuff? How about liability; if someone trips and falls on your property, can you cover the lawsuit without losing your house?

[hedgehog]

21. Check out the codes and regulations on swimming pools , too.!

Even the above ground ones you set up from a kit may need to be fenced. It may change your liability coverage if you're not in compliance with local regs!

[Mabus]

12. We reviewed our in January, right before we moved

We still have our home in Kansas. We've got relatives staying there. One of them lives there full time and is taking care of another mentally ill family member. We've got another one that stays there occasionally to help out. They've been in and out of the hospital several times in the past year and we didn't want to cause her a sudden disruption in her life. Plus, it was a sudden move and we didn't have time to make other arrangements.

Our biggest concern was that the mentally ill family member would set the house on fire or cause some water damage. We went over the policy very carefully and got as much natural and man-made disaster coverage we could. It cost a lot but we're sleeping better because of it.

[hedgehog]

13. Buying insurance is what I do instead of playing the slots! It's a

bet I hope I lose! I would love to pay premiums the next 40 years and never make a claim!

[Mabus]

18. I've been through it more than once in the past

and trying to collect can be a pain. Back in the mid-80's I lost three salt aquariums and close to a thousand albums because of water damage. To make a long story short, the living room ceiling caved in and I wasn't allowed in to the apartment for safety reasons for over a week. When I finally was able to get in I found that parts of the ceiling had fallen into my salt tanks and all the fish and my invertebrates were dead. Two of the tanks had cracked and the equipment (filters, lights, etc.) burned out after standing in water. It was a stinky mess. I also found that my album covers were covered with mold and were considered a health hazard to be destroyed.

I haggled with the insurance company over the value of the fish, the tanks, the albums and the furniture (I didn't really care about the furniture). We finally settled but it took quite a while. I became a lot more careful about what the policy I purchased covered after this disaster.

[hedgehog]

19. We have a seperate policy on our barn and outbuildings and contents.

My husband has a metal lathe, a wood lathe, a Ford 9-N tractor and an old John Deere tractor out there as well as saws, complete mechanic's tool set(s) etc. If you have sepcial hobbies and/or special items, get them documented and get them covered.

[Mabus]

20. That reminds me

Great advice.

We have a huge detached garage that we also have covered in our insurance policy. It has everything from a full-size copy machine to books. Since we're planning on moving back we put our non-essentials into storage and made sure we got replacement cost insurance on the stuff we could.

We were reminded to do that when the transformer behind it blew last year and caused a small fire to both the garage and the house. It melted the wiring from the transformer to the house. The electric company picked up most of the costs but not all of it. Up until then we didn't have it covered.