Home insurance: Flooding problems

Dear readers, we should know there are several facts clear. When you look at all the different types of natural disaster that can affect your home, flooding is one of the most common. It makes no difference whether you live in a city or the countryside, when enough rains fall, either the drains back up or the ground gets so saturated, the water has nowhere to go but across the ground in a flood. In fact, even if you have a home in an area supposedly rated as a low flood risk, you can still get caught. Whether climate change is real, one thing does seem clear. We have had a lot more weather recently, and it has been causing damage to the structures of our homes and ruining the contents. So, no matter where you live, remember your home is the biggest single capital investment you make. Some coverage is better than no coverage.

Except, there's a strange plague sweeping the country. It seems insurance companies have decided to stop offering wind and water-related insurance cover. We could be cynical and say this is just capitalism at work but, when you can't get coverage yourself, you find that ever helpful mortgage holder comes up with a policy that brings tears to your eyes. In all this, there's one fact that's supposed to make this all bearable. There's always flooding coverage from FEMA.

Introduced in 1968, the Federal Flood Insurance Program is intended to give you cover so long as your community participates. This allows owners, renters, business operators and condominium unit owners the chance to get some cover. So what has to happen? There has to be a mapping exercise which captures where the local floodplain lies and in which direction the floodways run. Getting this information right requires input from hydrologists and other experts. But FEMA has been in financial difficulties and one of the economies it has made is in the mapping department. That's why many of its maps show floodplains and floodways as straight lines. No real money has been spent on matching the maps to the rise and fall of the local land. According to FEMA, it's all flat.

This failure creates genuine hardship. You may know your home is built on higher, well-drained ground but, when it comes to the cost of insurance, you're treated the same as people whose homes are most at risk at the bottom of the hill. Since commercial insurers use FEMA's maps, you can end up paying hundred more dollars than you should. It can be worth paying for an expert's report to appeal the mapping, but not everyone has the cash available to pay for that.

So always check the homeowners insurance quotes to see whether flood coverage is included and, if so, whether it's limited in ways that make it poor value. Talk to your neighbors and find out how their insurers define the area's risk level. If you have a well-organized area, there should be a person designated as your area's floodplain manager. Your local manager should be able to offer detail advice. To get the best value homeowners insurance, you really do need a community response, particularly if you want to appeal FEMA's maps.

How to Fully Protect Your Home

If you are looking for insurance for your home, or any insurance for that matter, it is always best to know exactly what the insurance company is offering you before you sign the dotted line. Most Americans have a general idea on how insurance works when you are protecting your home, and how most forms of insurance work as well. But when it comes right down to it, every single insurance policy is different, and simply knowing the basics may not cut it when it comes down to your house insurance. Before you start getting quotes for your insurance, you want to be sure that you know every possible aspect of house insurance, or you may wind up with a policy that won't help you when you need it most. Not educating yourself on the ins and outs of house insurance could wind up costing you thousands of dollars down the road, or right now through your premiums. Here we will talk about the most important things you need to know about your insurance policy.

The United States experienced their worst natural disaster along the Gulf Coast in 2005 when Hurricane Katrina hit. This caused a huge housing situation as residents were dislocated, lost their homes, or all of the above. This disaster ended up being the most expensive disaster in American history, for the government, and for the insurance companies. It also cost the residents of the Gulf Coast hundreds of thousands of dollars because many did not have the proper housing insurance on their assets. These citizens made the mistake of trusting that the insurance companies had their back, when it came right down to it, in some cases they just didn't, because they didn't have to.
An insurance policy is literally a protection from risk to you, but it is much different than a guarantee of protection as you might have found out if you were one of the hundreds of thousands of Louisiana residents that lost everything they worked their entire lives for. The critical thing missing from their insurance policies was flood protection. While they may have been protected from some natural cause damage, the true damage from Katrina occurred when the levees broke and the flooding occurred. So, for residents that had Hurricane protection but did not have flood protection, they lost everything, and there was nothing that anybody could do about it.

The most important thing you need to know when you are protecting your home is, what potential losses could you incur? Make a list and include everything, taking into account where you live and the potential hazards that could occur. What your homeowners insurance will do for you is provide a contract between you and your insurance company that they will protect you against loss by a "covered" peril. If you are not covered for a specific peril and it unfortunately should happen to you, you will have no recourse with the insurance company, a lesson learned with great difficulty along the Gulf Coast.

Your insurance company will help you with this, and your policy will specifically state what is and what is not covered. Keep in mind when you are seeking homeowners insurance quotes, there is no one company that can cover you for every situation or every possible event. That being said however, knowing your perceived perils to your home ahead of time will take you a long way towards getting the most affordable and comprehensive homeowners insurance.

A Guide Home Insurance Classes

To determine what kind of perils or incidents are covered by your home insurance policy, your insurance company assigns a set class to your policy. The various classes that could be assigned range from class HO1 to HO6, and each one has a different set of incidents that are considered insurable. Following is a general guide to these classes. For specific information about your policy, be sure to check with your insurance company. HO1: A limited coverage against 11 different hazards. These include theft, riots, windstorm and hail. This is also referred to as a basic policy and can include coverage for personal and medical liability. Another great aspect of this class is that it can cover your personal possessions even while you are traveling with them. HO2: Reaches further than HO1 by covering 17 total hazards including water damage, smoke, falling objects, freezing pipes and the 11 hazards covered by HO1. HO3: This is the most common class for home insurance policyholders. It covers damage from all hazards unless they are specifically excluded on the policy. This includes liability and medical payments - unless they are specifically excluded. HO4: Covers the personal possessions of a renter's policy. This does not cover any damage done to the walls, pipes or actual structures owned by the landlord. HO5: Covers everything in HO3 that is not excluded and requires no specified incident or peril to have damaged your home. This is especially helpful for insurable incidents in which there are no witnesses and no evidence of the cause of the damage. HO6: Covers the personal property and interior walls of a condominium. This class of policy also occasionally covers liabilities. This will not cover incidents to pipes, outer walls, hallways and other areas covered by the condominium association policy. Remember, your home insurance policy should be tailored to the needs and risks your family faces. Be sure to ask your home insurance company to explain what is covered within your policy class and what is excluded so that you can be certain your policy will be there to protect you when you need it most.

Is Cheap Home Insurance Good For Business?

With unemployment rates reaching an all time high and economic recovery that brings in new jobs slow to appear, freelancing and working from home are becoming more and more popular among the recently laid off. Whether you have the choice to work at home or not, you need to make sure that your home business is properly insured through your home insurance policy.

Is Cheap Home Insurance Good For Business?

One of the top goals for consumers is to find cheap home insurance that offers them protection against risk. Unfortunately, when you are simply searching for cheap home insurance instead of home insurance that offers good coverage for the activities you use your home for, you could be in trouble. If you choose regular home insurance and do not disclose that you are running a business on site, then you could suffer from unpaid claims, lost equipment and lawsuits resulting from the damages your business or home causes to others.

If you have clients who come on site to your home business, then your home insurance company needs to be made aware of this so that you can get proper liability coverage. If you have equipment at home that is for business use, then your home insurance company needs to know this so that they can cover it properly and you won't have to suffer any loss of use while you scramble for the funds to replace it.

When your clients rely on your continued business to keep THEM in business, then your non-disclosure of home business activities to your home insurance company could result in a slowdown of your production and a financial loss for your clients. This is a dangerous risk as not only could you lose the money you paid in buying your equipment initially, but your clients could sue you because they depended on you to stay productive even after an insurable incident.

In addition to ensuring you have the proper coverage for your home business through your home insurance company, you should also get professional liability coverage so that no business can take your personal assets as a result of a business lawsuit.

So remember, let your home insurance company know about your home business and make sure their policy protects you properly.

Home Insurance on a Paid-Off Home

You might think that once your home is paid off you can drop your home insurance and live a carefree life with no insurance premiums. But just because there are no state requirements to hold home insurance on your house, that doesn't mean that this useful coverage should be ignored after your home is paid off.

Your home could endure an insurable incident whether or not you have a mortgage. After all, it is not the fact that you owe money on your home that exposes you to risk-it is the fact that risk is everywhere and could happen to anyone. You see, when you have a mortgage your lender is at risk for damages to your home because they have more money riding on it than you do. That is why they demand that you have home insurance. But if you think that you don't need to look for home insurance quotes once your home is paid off, then consider this: if your home catches fire, floods, is vandalized or has any other insurable event happen to it then you must pay for the damages out of pocket unless you have insurance. You might not even have a home left to live in until you can find the money to pay for all the repairs and in the mean time, you will be forced to pay out of your own pocket for your temporary living space.

Of course, you can look for less expensive home insurance quotes once your home is paid off. You could consider raising your deductible since you no longer have a mortgage to pay off and can likely afford to pay more deductible out of your own pocket. You can look for lower limits as long as you stay within the range that your home is worth so you can be fully reimbursed for an event that destroys your home. You can even determine what is and isn't covered based on how you perceive your risk.

Remember, while saving money on home insurance quotes is important, having an insurance policy that is there for you when you need it is vital. Don't scrimp too much on the policy and make sure you look out for your own self-interest and bottom line.