Insurance

[James]

I pay about $1000 a year for 150-160K in coverage on my house. Which is well about purchase price, but maybe well below replacement if you start to talk about using 12x12 sills and such, and walls of hand planed 10-16 inch planks with rose head and T head nails and 7-8 inch wide pine floor boards.
The price you quoated Al was shocking but luckily they don't hit me up that bad. Course all the wiring and plumbing and heating in the house dates to 1993 under the last owner, so that helps .

[Tujo]

Well, mostly I think its just my fault for not really negotiating the points. It kinda went like this:
Them - we won't insure houses with knob and tube, galvanised, asbestos
Me - gee, what I promise to get it removed?
Them - sure, if you can do it 60 days
Me -60 days, thats like an eternity. Sure!
47 days later...

Frankly it's all work that needs to be done anyways, so I'm not so much annoyed about the requirement to do as I am about the time frame.

The asbestos was on the heating system pipes. I'm sure that my agent isn't going to be knocking on my door on the 61st day to check if the work is done. On the other hand, if my house burns down on the 61st day, I'm going to bet it would be a challenge to get them to pay out.

[RF]

Well, I think I'm out of the woods for now. I can protect the house with a business risk policy that covers my original investment and the money we sink into it. It won't cover replacement cost since nobody can afford that. It's not the best arrangement, but it's the best I can find right now.

I'll get in just under a thousand for the year.

Odd. The house has no value standing, but if it burns down; then it has value. Only insurance people can up up with stuff like this....lol. Thank you for all the good word and advice.

Tell me again, why did I let my wife talk me into this?
Ron

[Don M]

Because you needed a challenge in your life! Don

[diagrah]

From this and my past house, I know the insurers aren't thrilled with galvanized or KT wiring, but I've never heard of them requiring 100% removal if the systems are intact. OTOH, I did have some insurers refuse to talk to me if the systems hadn't been updated in key places, such as breakers instead of fuses.

I'm negotiating for coverage right now and while the local insurers aren't too concerned about the ancient wiring and plumbing, they're all a bit anal over the in-floor furnaces that were so popular in this region. They've even "accepted" that there's asphalt siding that will be removed at some point, but a (working) floor furnace over 25 years old is enough to turn away just about every insurer around here. It's a pain in the butt.

The other thing that puts off insurers around here is trying to insure my rental property, which has had more work done on it than all of the other houses combined.

[HarleyLady]

The insurance company says replacement value is $600,000--waay more than we paid for it--must be based on cost per square foot. We're paying under $1,000/yr. We didn't go with the historic insurance I posted about earlier. We do have updated electrical, heating and plumbing (done around 1980) so that makes a big difference. This was arranged through the insurance broker at our credit union and we don't have the policy yet so don't know who he placed it with.

[herryjames]

Very nice thread.