Chipmunks! This is a big year for chipmunks around here…and they do a lot of damage!
@thumper1 – the chipmunks are out of control in CT. I first noticed them a few years ago, but there are SO many more this year. I am convinced they will be finding their way into my house. They run around playing the same way the squirrels do.
I noticed that there is a substantial (35%, more than $350) discount on my house and auto policy because of the combination. The coverage for personal property is very generous, considering the insubstantial value of my furniture and other stuff.
Turbo, I wonder if you have USAA? They jacked our insurance up to $360 per square foot, including basement space. Our house is nice, but not particularly custom nor expensive to rebuild, it’s the land that’s valuable. They are really scamming people with the more expensive houses.
We changed to Armed Forces. Reasonable, don’t make you overinsure, straightforward, good service. But you have to have had a military connection.
This thread just inspired me to check our homeowner’s coverage. Premium is $944/year; house is insured for more than I expected (about 75% of market value – on the property tax assessment, the lot is generally ~50% of assessed price).Coverage for belongings is way higher than what’s actually in the house. We aren’t in Tornado Alley or close to the ocean (though we have had a couple earthquakes in the DC area in recent years), so I’m sure that helps with the premium cost. We had one claim about nine years ago and that’s been it. My biggest worry is that we have a lot of 80-ft oak trees within striking distance of the house. They are really expensive to take down or trim back. It’s not how I’d like to get a kitchen renovation!
We have given up on finding a “good deal” for homeowners insurance. We cut our cost dramatically by switching our to a deductible of 10% of replacement value. Now we cringe every time a hail storm gets near our neighborhood.
CountingDown, it might be a way to get a kitchen remodel! But trim them back to keep the family safe. I had a tree go down on the neighbor’s back entry. Scary. Their insurance covered removal from their yard, as it hit the house. My insurance covered nothing as no property of mine was hit, and I got to pay for the 6’ root tip up in the my yard.
Rosered, our city must have lower housing insurance costs. Mine is far less, thankfully.
Last year, I dealt with a relative’s townhouse that had been damaged by a burst frozen pipe. It was a 3 story home and the damage started on the top floor so the water cascaded down and basically ruined the whole place. Needed a new kitchen, cabinets, appliances. Needed extensive drywall and flooring. It was uninhabitable and a disaster. To complicate things, 1) there was a tenant in the condo who was behind in payments and we were evicting; and 2) there was dispute as to what was our responsibility vs the condo association.
Allstate was FABULOUS. Seriously. Prompt, professional, thought 5 steps ahead. Handled all the back and forth with the condo assoc and their insurance co. Checked in w me every few days proactively to advise me of status. I wrote a letter to the VP of whatever who was over the guy we were dealing with, complimenting him, and received a personal letter back. I could not have been more pleased.
My goodness, this has incited a near riot :). Here’s some (sad) details. The house was designed mostly by yours truly and built in 2001-2002 by a very competent custom builder. It is loaded with high end stuff like good granite countertops, Amish crafted custom kitchen, lots of hardwood, all brick, all high end windows, and so on. Granted, a lot of the luxury homes around here these days are pretty generic. Cost at the time including the lot was $100/sq ft. The insurance company (Travelers) claims the replacement cost is around $155/sq ft. Market value is $110/sq ft if we’re lucky.
There are some systemic problems with the estimate; the house is 6000 sq ft, of which 2000 is the lower walkout level. The cost to finish this was fairly trivial, it’s nice looking and all, but not $100 or $150/sq ft. The tax assessor had similar ideas and a reassessment dropped our taxes a bit. The insurance company has inspected the property. We are covered for flood damage, for the entire house. I wonder if I need to worry about my roof flooding…
What bothers me is the constant 10% increases year after year, all in the name of ‘replacement cost’. That is nowhere near reality, I can open the MLS site here and find brand new spec houses like mine that are going for a lot less.