Homeowners Insurance

Miscellaneous
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This post is more than a pet peeve, and probably justifies a separate thread. I was looking for the category from the old board called Pissing and Moaning…

I have a small 1890s farm house in Southern Idaho, whose value, with land and outbuildings is perhaps $350K. It’s a summer home, and a place to escape the city. I’ve been insuring it for steadily increasing prices since I bought it in 1996. As recently as 2019, I was not paying $500 per year.

Last year I paid $1200, and the insurer billed me over $1800 this year!!! Every time I shop around, I purchase a policy at a reasonable price (perhaps $900 annually) from a new company, but once the new policy holder inspection is performed, they deny my coverage for any of a variety of nitpicking issues, that no one else in the area would pass either. These inspections and terminations have been going on since 2020.

This week, my latest new policy was terminated for two reasons:

  1. I have an antique wood burning stove in the house, NOT HOOKED UP TO A CHIMNEY, never has been, and is used only as décor. They denied coverage saying that I could simply hook it up to the chimney and fire it up in the case of a power outage.
  2. I have an old wood root cellar in the back yard, whose sides extend only about 5 feet above ground. the old original wood siding is worn, but gets repairs and fresh paint every few years. Each fall, I cover the lower 3 feet of the shady side with a tarp to keep the wood from having standing snow against it for months. They denied me this time as they claim/assume there is no siding under the heavy plastic tarp.

Is there an insurance agent on the board or better an underwriter, who can help me understand what’s going on and give me some advice as to how to handle this nonsense?

Full time residents in the area frequently have both of the conditions my policy was terminated for, and I’ve learned that some summer home residents, who have no furnaces and only working wood stoves, which AGAIN NEVER GET USED, as they are summer homes, have given up on insurance and simply do without it.

Oh, and BTW - I’ve owned the house since 1996, owned a primary residence since 1977, and a rental since 2003, and have never submitted a single MOTHER ■■■■■■■ claim. How am I a risk!?!?!? They should be lining up to take my money.

TIA

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Our insurance went up 50% this year. I decided to finally respond YES to the roofers who knock on my door (not able to see the ‘No solicitors please’ sign) very regularly saying due to recent :“storms” we could qualify for a replacement. Had the roofers inspect the roof, then insurance came out and pretty much said hell no.

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My understanding is the price of a lot of things should start going back to when America was great, starting in late January.

For example, the price of gasoline should quickly go back to $2.00 a gallon, and according to some, America stopped being great when gasoline pierced the $0.99 level, so it may go back to less than $1 per gallon… because that’s what greatness requires.

Accordingly, you may want to tell the insurance company that America is headed back to greatness, and they need to decide right now if they want to be part of the solution or part of the problem.

No compromises! No more woke insurance premium increases!!

(Let me know if you want me to photoshop a picture of you with an AR-15 to include in your correspondences, for emphasis)

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4

Fortunately for me, my wife answered the door, and she has a lot more persuasive powers than me. Wind damage from the various “Big Winds” was determined.

A couple of weeks later, a crew of 6 tore off 2 layers of shingles, hauled away 18,000 pounds of stuff and we had a new roof on by the time I came home, with dueling air guns finishing it off.

Those guys know how to work… but I dunno if they’ll be back next year.

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US govt prints money. It devalues the dollars you have and the dollars you will make unless your wages keep up with the money printing. We have only had a little taste of debt crisis thus far.

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You know, if we could somehow keep all this extreme weather from happening…:wink:

One truth about insurance, when the pool of insureds shrinks (for whatever reason) rates go up.

Another truth about insurance, if payouts for damages goes up rates go up.

When both truths are in full motion (like they are now) rates really rise - and fast.

Given the new climate realities in play right now, I don’t see this trend reversing itself anytime soon. Worse, it won’t be too long before it starts hammering the banks with disaster defaults.

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I think there is way more to the dramatic price increases than simply the global inflation that followed the pandemic. I’ve heard, but would like to hear it from someone in the industry, that there were a dramatic number of increases in claims for homeowners insurance during the Pandemic, driven by people spending much more time in their homes. I’d like to know if this is a fact.

But more importantly, I’d like to understand the radical increase in the manner in which new client’s properties are inspected and scrutinized in ways that never occurred (to my knowledge) prior to about 2019, or 2020.

I would love to get an understanding from someone who works in underwriting.

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Socialize cost, privatize profit – the mantra of corporate America, and we let it do it.

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9

I don’t have any insight into the home insurance market dynamics, but it seems to me the cost of labor for a whole lot of jobs that don’t involve getting a college degree is skyrocketing, under the guise of correcting inequalities, or injustices or “it’s our turn to stick to people!”… or something.

I took my older Toyota pickup to an auto repair chain because I was starting to get a vibration through the shifter. $120 later for the diagnostic, they couldn’t find anything and said to bring it back if it got worse.

Took it to the dealer and they quickly found a CV joint in the driveline was nearly broken free of the brackets to keep it near the truck body. The bracket was dangling, held by the screw on one side. You could move the driveline around a couple of inches. The first mechanic shop didn’t bother to even look under the truck, apparently.

I don’t mind paying $120 for a diagnostic… but I do mind if they didn’t do anything… leaving me at risk for being in the west desert with a broken driveline.

I’m increasingly seeing this “now’s our time to stick it to people!” attitude.

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10

^^^THIS^^^ In a big way! I personally feel like some portion of the inflation in the last few years was simply opportunistic price gouging.

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That reminds me of a recent interaction that I had with a local mechanic/shop. My truck had complete brake failure, I mean lines died, and I had zero brakes. Fortunately I didn’t crash into anyone or anything. Anyway, I got it to the local mechanic. I left it with them, expecting them to be able to fix it. I got a call the next day, saying that they could not fix it, but there was NO (zero) charge to me from them. I did have to get the truck towed to the dealer, that wasn’t cheap, and the repair to my truck definitely won’t be.

So, if you are ever near Rocky Mount, NC and need work done on your vehicle; I have an honest shop to recommend.

As for homeowners insurance, yeah, ours is going up, again. We’re approaching $1500/yr. Doesn’t help that we do live in a hurricane prone area, and wind damage can and does happen. At least we don’t live on the coast were some folks can’t get insurance and their homes fall into the ocean.

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Ah, insurance. My wife and I buy a lot of insurance because we have two rental properties. That means there are property and liability needs for each, plus an umbrella policy in case someone sues us, plus our home and cars. All told we paid a little over $16k last year in premiums. It was all with the one well-known company, primarily in order to get the umbrella policy.

Out of the blue this year, in spite of never making a claim, we got a cancellation letter on the umbrella policy for some cryptic, “It no longer meets our criteria…,” reason. We tried to work it with the existing agent, but no dice. We got a lead from the Utah Rental Housing Association to an independent agent and switched everything over to what turned out to be three different companies, but mostly Auto-Owners, and will save $6000/year.

But, and you knew there had to be one, early this month we learned that the shower pan failed in our home’s master bath, so after only six weeks with the new company we filed a claim. It’s unclear how that will affect rates going forward, but we are currently in a sort of limbo between the insurer and the restoration company in how much will be paid. As I type this I’m enjoying the sounds of the final demo in that bathroom.

“It’s always something.” - Roseanne Rosanadana.

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FWIW, my Allstate home policy just went from $1,600/yr to $2,600/yr, almost 60% increase. I have been with Allstate for 30+ years.

If there are insurance agents on here, I’m open to exploring.

Link to Allstate’s operating income graph.

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And therein lies the problem…

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There was certainly some of that, but not on a macro scale.

Back on topic, few things piss me off as badly as insurance. We had a pipe leaking behind a wall that we didn’t know about until the water finally burst through the downstairs ceiling. My State Farm agent (who I’ve been with for nearly 30 years now) advised me to pay the approximately $10K out of pocket to fix it ourselves and not file a homeowners claim because the rates would skyrocket. I (stupidly) took his advice and paid for all the repairs ourselves…and my policy still went up by 25% this year. Because fark you, that’s why.

This leads to a very obvious question. If I pay into my policy for 30 years without filing a single claim, and then get told NOT to use it when something does actually happen that would require a claim, then what the f$ck am I paying you for?!?!

They’re all crooks and liars. Every single damn one of them. I won’t even get into the 35% increase in my auto insurance because my wife backed into a pole in a parking lot at less than 5 mph, which was her only “accident” in 25 years.

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It absolutely was. Never let a good crisis go to waste.

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i think you mean a photo in a truck with sunglasses and a goatee for a profile picture

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18

This is precisely how I feel.

I had a close friend as a child, who’s father was an attorney by training, but who had worked most of his adult life as an attorney for and eventually worked as legal counsel for claims adjusters for a couple if different large national insurers.

He often took small amount of time to try to impress on his son (and I was often around to hear these conversations) that frequently, insurance is a BAD BET (his term), And that if you were reasonably intelligent, had a decent grasp of managing finances, a reasonable layman’s sense of risk, that you would not be purchasing much insurance, as it would not turn out to benefit you.

I’ve always bought reasonable homeowners policies, as the cost compared to a potential catastrophic loss, always seemed like a GOOD BET. For the last several years, that calculus had been headed regularly and quickly in the wrong direction. I too, have paid for damage, that I was not responsible in anyway for, as I did not want my rates to increase.

It’s now past the point of feeling like it is a BAD BET.

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In the event of something truly catastrophic (or even semi-catastrophic), insurance can potentially save you from immediate financial ruin. Safeguarding against that is essentially what we’re paying for.

Assuming they don’t find some sort of loophole that allows them to weasel their way out of paying anything, that is. Which, unfortunately, is about 99% of what their job entails.

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When corporate profits were at an all-time high in industries with the worst “inflation”… I’d say that’s a pretty safe guess.

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