Home Insurance

You are going to see a jump in insurance premiums with the losses being experienced by the California fires...
We saw jumps of over 30% here in Canada after the the forest fires of 2017 and 2018, and then again in 2022 and 2023.
 
Yes. I assume that companies will try and cross-level their finances by upping rates nation-wide to cover payouts in Cali. I also fully expect that they will run to DC and demand a bailout after explaining that they actually don't have the money to cover all the claims. And I don't doubt they will get it - though now I feel as though I'm getting away from the OPs topic.
 
RL338 said:
Today I received my renewal for my home owner insurance and it went up 62%. I’ve never filed a claim with them. Needless to say I will be shopping around.
Has anyone else seen this amount increase?
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It happened to us last year. I had to shop commercial insurance around for the same reason this year. I was looking at a $3K increase for business insurance until we shopped it. Ultimately, same coverage with a different company, it went down about 10%.
We also had our property taxes go up 26% on both business and home, so we got the double whammy. There's nothing like having someone's hands in your wallet all the time.
 
Living in the open farming land of central WI we don’t have earthquakes , hurricanes or wildfires. Yes we might see a possible tornado , it’s just normally rain snow and cold.
 
Bruce Mc said:
At least you received a renew notice. A number of companies are dropping policies in areas that cost them in claims. I would imagine that a good bit of California won't be insurable going forward.
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The ironic part of this is that in 10 years of owning our business and having been in our house for 17, we have never filed a claim on either property. We deal with wind, cold, and thunderstorms in summer, but we also don't live in a seismic zone and a wildfire would be a once in a lifetime event, if ever. So much of this is insurance companies hitting policyholders in the middle of the country because they can. Insurance companies almost never go bankrupt. With the CA situation, that may change, but believe we will all be paying for it.
 
I was chatting about insurance with a fellow the other day who told me his insurance company dropped him after 26 years without a claim; their rationale was he was due for a claim after so long and didn't want to cover him for the eventual claim due to the heightened risk. He had to go to a different provider.
Unfortunately, less than a year later, he did suffer an incident and had a claim. Once that claim was settled with his new provider, his original insurance provider contacted him asking him to come back as had had his claim and was no longer a risk to them. (He wasn't sure exactly how they knew)
He told him that since they didn't want his business anymore before his claim, he wasn't willing to go back to them now!
 
We have been in our new home for 5 years now and no claims to date. We have had sizable increase the past couple of years so we shoo it every year. I can't wait to see what's coming later this year. We pay yearly to the best price so we are protected until this fall.

JD338
 
We live in Iowa and saw a similar increase in premium this past summer. Our son lives in Texas and his insurance premium sky rocketed too. The new model appears to be higher premiums with higher deductibles.
I expect the current insurer claim experience will “demand” another increase in the near future…if the insurance is available.
 
I think it was two years ago I went through this . my homeowners ins took a substantial increase . I contacted my local office to find out if it was a mistake . no mistake but we will shop around with our affiliated insurance . they ran me right up to the due date and said they had nothing available to them any cheaper . I paid a payment that covered 30 days of ins . I shopped around and got my homeowners for way less than half , of what they wanted . I had to switch my auto insurance with them too , to get the best homeowners price . so in the end my auto ins went up about $25 per six months , my home owners went down by about $2000 . it was a pretty easy choice for me .

I'm 62 yo now . the insurance I dropped , I've been with them since I was 16yo for auto ins . I was with them since I was 20 yo, for homeowners . I had my business ins with them for the 35 years I was self employed . I bought my highmark health ins through them ,I had that until obama care kicked in and highmark prices got crazy high . I dropped highmark mid year and then paid a fine at the end of the year for dropping my health ins . . every insurance I ever had was through that office .

forgot to mention . I never had a homeowners claim . I never had an auto accident claim. I never had a business ins claim .
 
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jimbires said:
I think it was two years ago I went through this . my homeowners ins took a substantial increase . I contacted my local office to find out if it was a mistake . no mistake but we will shop around with our affiliated insurance . they ran me right up to the due date and said they had nothing available to them any cheaper . I paid a payment that covered 30 days of ins . I shopped around and got my homeowners for way less than half , of what they wanted . I had to switch my auto insurance with them too , to get the best homeowners price . so in the end my auto ins went up about $25 per six months , my home owners went down by about $2000 . it was a pretty easy choice for me .

I'm 62 yo now . the insurance I dropped , I've been with them since I was 16yo for auto ins . I was with them since I was 20 yo, for homeowners . I had my business ins with them for the 35 years I was self employed . I bought my highmark health ins through them ,I had that until obama care kicked in and highmark prices got crazy high . I dropped highmark mid year and then paid a fine at the end of the year for dropping my health ins . . every insurance I ever had was through that office .

forgot to mention . I never had a homeowners claim . I never had an auto accident claim. I never had a business ins claim .
Click to expand...
And since you are/were such a good customer, we/they decided to stick it to ya.
Typical insurance companies.
BTW, what's the deal with the roof scammers? They contact you, say you have roof damage from the storm last summer and you don't have to pay much. Your insurance will cover it.

JD338
 
Last summer Oregon burned off 2million acres of mostly rural farm, ranch and timber land. I don’t have the numbers in front of me but as I recall there were not too many homes destroyed. For those who lost homes it was of course catastrophic. There were plenty of examples of burcratic nightmares that boiled down to “I’m well educated in fire fighting” you’re just a farmer and we saved your house kind of thing. Most of the folks we know would have been better served if those educated fire bosses would have saved the machine sheds and hay stacks. The state responded by publishing a wildfire risk map and codifying into law, ORS 477.490 what you as a home owner must do to protect your property from wildfire if you’re in the higher risk areas. Kinda makes sense other than it was a gimme to the insurance companies.
There are three hazard levels, Low, Moderate and High. Our property is in the moderate area, the boundary to a low risk area is our south property line and our west property line. Our first call to the state did provide some useful information regarding how the boundaries were set. Google earth shows lots of trees I was told. No, no boots on the ground, no we didn’t consider you have two streams, no we didn’t take into account your property has been actively managed to reduce wild fire hazard, “ but you don’t have to manage because you’re not in the higher risk areas with wild land interface”. No we didn’t take into account you have a city fire hydrant, “you’re in the county how did you get a City fire hydrant?” City needed an easement for a water line to serve part of their growth boundary, a win win kind of thing. “So how do I challenge this arbitrary boundary setting” ? “ I don’t know, but don’t worry the insurance companies are not to use this map for rate setting.”
Our insurance guy is honest. We dropped by his office and found him with a list on his desk of folks like us who are on the edges of these boundaries. He had already been advised by the insurance underwriters they were aware of “the map” . He is working with the state and the underwriters to find ways to improve his clients position with underwriting.
Can’t wait for renewal time.
 
RL338 said:
Today I received my renewal for my home owner insurance and it went up 62%. I’ve never filed a claim with them. Needless to say I will be shopping around.
Has anyone else seen this amount increase?
Click to expand...
Whatever you do don't come to Florida. When I first moved here in 99 my insurance was $800.00. Year after year it gradually creeped up till I was paying $2000.00 A year. In the last three years it has gone from two Grand to Nine grand and up. Needless to say I can't afford that price and I'm now putting a percentage of money away each year for repair purposes in case a hurricane decides to show it's ugly face.
 
I've been thinking like diverdown ^^^ lately. The chance of losing my home entirely is extremely remote. The $3,000/yr to cover the property doesn't even include flood insurance. I could easily save the $3,000 and just take my chances. If the house burned down, I'd have to rebuild it at my expense but what are the odds of that happening?

Now let's talk about auto insurance. I just got my bill for our two vehicles. $1,720 only covers us for the next 6 months. So figure $3.500/yr. If it was legal to drive with no insurance, it sure would be an enticing idea.
 
In the end, the insurance companies win, everytime.
They make billions of dollars (or more), influence political bodies for regulatory change (and always to their benefit), and there is no oversight to ensure that they are being open, fair, transparent, or accountable.
And then when disaster strikes, do there best to either get out of paying for the claim, or taking forever to pay it out so that impacted people can return back to some semblance of a normal life that existed prior to the disaster. Many of the homes lost in wildfires a few years back, still have not yet had their homes replaced. And here in BC, if you're trying to buy a home or a vehicle, which requires financing, and the financier requires a copy of your insurance policy before lending, the insurance companies will not provide insurance if there is a wildfire within 100 kms (approx 60 miles) of where you live. Not sure how as you need the vehicle to evacuate the area if the fire should get close enough to your place of residence...and in this case the vehicle should not be in peril of a loss due to the wildfire...no logic here!
And government won't upset the process and enforce timely compliance for covering insured losses, as they are afraid to upset their political support and funding sources. A totally crooked system!
 
Every kind of insurance has learned to squeeze. They share information with each other.

I signed up for life insurance (with an agent I met at a church camp ironically). We were playing on a climbing tower. I mentioned I used to teach beginners how to climb. He told me to list details of all I had done climbing recreationally on the forms to get a better deal.

Well, that tanked me getting life insurance with them They also shared it with all insurance companies so it took years before I could could get it at a reasonable rate from any company. They put me in the same risk category as bull riders.

It also was shared with the farm bureau health insurance who raised my rates.
 
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