/ By Paul Nelson / Home Insurance/ 0 Comments

How to find the best homeowners insurance for your property

Finding the best homeowners insurance company for you starts with making sure you’re shopping for the right coverage. A standard policy covers your house and other structures, but the amount of coverage you need depends on how much it would cost to rebuild your home.

What’s Covered?

Homeowners insurance policies generally cover destruction and damage to a residence, the loss or theft of possessions, and personal liability for harm to others.

Three basic levels of coverage exist: actual cash value, replacement cost, and extended replacement cost. Actual cash value covers the cost of your house and items after factoring in depreciation. Replacement cost fixes or replaces your home and possessions without depreciation factored in. Extended replacement cost gives you an additional buffer of 25%, 50%, or 100% coverage on the primary structure.

Policy rates are largely determined by the insurer’s risk that you’ll file a claim. They look at your prior claims history, the condition of the home, and the location and terrain of your property.

When shopping for a policy, get quotes from multiple companies, and check with any insurer you already work with.

What a Homeowner’s Policy Provides

Damage to the Interior and Exterior of Your House

In you suffer damage from a fire, lightning, burst water pipe or other covered disasters, your insurer will compensate you so your house can be repaired or rebuilt. Destruction from floods, earthquakes, and poor maintenance is generally not covered and you will need a separate policy to insure for them.

Clothing, furniture, appliances, and most of the other contents of your home are covered if they’re destroyed by a covered incident. Your policy should even cover your belongings off premises, so you could file a claim if your belongings were stolen almost anywhere in the world. There may be a limit on the amount your insurer will reimburse you, however.

If you own high priced or unique items it’s worth looking into adding a rider to provide coverage. Most policies have limited standard limits for things jewelry, art, musical instruments, antiques, and other items that may need appraisals.

Loss of use or additional living expenses

This pays for temporary housing while your home is being rebuilt or repaired. It can take several years to rebuild a home after a wildfire. Make sure you have enough coverage here to rent for 1-2 years in your area at a minimum.

Building ordinance

Pays for updates to undamaged portions of your home if your city says you need to bring the home up to current code before they’ll issue permits to rebuild. This can be very pricey when you consider interior sprinklers are required for brand new homes in California.

/ By Paul Nelson / Home Insurance • Insurance • Renters Insurance/ 0 Comments

Replacement Cost vs. ACV

On your homeowners insurance policy, you’ll see either “replacement cost” or “actual cash value (ACV)” as the claim payout method for your home and belongings. If your home has been updated (roof, plumbing, heating, electrical) within the last 30 years it likely has replacement cost coverage as a default. With older homes or roofs in bad condition, it’s not uncommon to see ACV coverage.

Actual cash value takes depreciation into account, and is the lesser coverage. Take your 10 year old TV and try to sell it on your own today, and it’ll likely be worth pennies on the dollar compared to what you paid for it. Your 40 year old roof may be worth 10% of what it would cost you to replace with a brand new one.

Replacement cost doesn’t factor depreciation into account. That means your 10 year old tv gets replaced with a brand new equivalent, and your roof does as well.
If it’s an option, you want replacement cost every time on your home and personal property.

/ By Paul Nelson / Car Insurance • Commercial Insurance • Home Insurance • Insurance • Renters Insurance/ 0 Comments

How to Make Your Insurance Claim Go Smooth As Butter

 

Insurance claims suck! They’re stressful, slow, confusing, and worst of all you’re filing one because something bad happened. After being part of hundreds of claims, I wanted to put together some of the best practices that we and our clients have used to make them a LOT less painful for everyone.
Probably the biggest time saver of us all is utilizing your insurance company’s in-network companies. Whether that’s an approved auto body shop they work with, a restoration company for your home, or a physician network for workers comp., this is going to save massive time and headaches. Most policies allow you to fix your car or repair your house from whomever you choose, as long as your adjuster approves of the repairs. It can take a week or longer for that negotiation between the adjuster and body shop to get an approval. And that’s before the repairs can even start! When you go with a body shop in their network, the body shop acts as your adjuster, and can start repairs immediately. You’ve saved yourself a week +, and the work is now probably guaranteed for the life of you owning the car. Win-win.

Be flexible for your adjuster. Unless you’re doing something that can’t wait, pick up the phone if they call. They’re probably working on dozens of other claims besides yours, and getting them on the phone is usually pretty tough. They return calls when they have time, and 9/10 times you’re going to get their voicemail if you call them. If you miss their call it coule be hours or a day before you can get back in touch.

To piggyback on the last point; be organized. Have all your questions written down, and go into calls assuming this is your one chance for the day to speak with the adjuster. It might be hours or the next day before the adjuster can get back to you.

/ By Paul Nelson / Flood Insurance • Home Insurance • Insurance/ • • / 0 Comments

Is Water Damage Covered Under My Homeowners Insurance?

The answer is yes…and no. It’s going to depend on what causes the water damage and where it comes from. We’re going to dive into a standard California homeowners policy to answer this. Your policy covers a “sudden and accidental discharge of water”. Here are a couple examples that would fall into that category:

  • A pipe bursts in your wall
  • Dishwasher hookup breaks off and pours water all over your kitchen
  • Washing machine pipe bursts

You can also get coverage for water backup (sometimes called sewer and drain backup). This won’t come standard on your policy, and must be added. It protects you if a toilet overflows while you’re on vacation, or if a sewer or drain backs up. You should add this coverage to your policy 100% of the time!

The key with these is that they happen suddenly, and they’re not a wear and tear issue. Which brings us to what’s not covered:

  • Wear and tear
  • Gradual leaks
  • Leaky faucets

All of these fall into the same bucket of being maintenance or wear and tear problems, and are not covered under your insurance. If your plumbing system is getting up there in age (15 years or more), make sure you have it checked regularly, and fix or replace any problems. Water damage can be dramatically expensive if not fixed quickly. We’re talking thousands or tens of thousands of dollars!

Damage from a flood is also not covered, but can be insured under a separate flood insurance policy. A flood is water that enters your house from the outside, unless related to a burst pipe.

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/ By Paul Nelson / Car Insurance • Home Insurance • Insurance/ 0 Comments

Are Your Personal Belongings Covered While In Your Car?

Depends on the insurance policies you have. Full coverage car insurance covers your car, and depending on your policy, you may have limited coverage for permanently installed after-market parts (sound system, in-dash navigation, nicer wheels and tires, etc.). There is no coverage for your personal belongings under your car insurance policy though.

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