The talk about home insurance in CA got me looking at my coverage

[MillauFr]

I honestly don't know what kind of eggs they buy. But they seem like the type to grouch about their $8 eggs when there are perfectly good $4 eggs available. Maybe on my walk, I'll strike up a conversation about eggs and see.

The people just bought a new Jeep for $109k are buying the $8 a dozen eggs.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

I will always advise people shopping to make sure you're comparing like for like coverage. Easier to do on the auto because the coverages are more in your face but home not as much.

We switched from Progressive a couple years ago due to a 50% increase on the home, something of which they were doing to a lot of policies. In any case our home insurance with our current carrier went up a lot for the 2024-2025 year and we decided to look around. We could have gone back to Progressive (they were the only carrier that could beat the price we currently have) and saved a decent amount HOWEVER it was for $125,000 less coverage than we were getting with the renewal on the present company AND it would have been with a $5,000 deductible for wind and hail. Progressive's calculation on the Dwelling was just quite a bit lower and given the homes in my area I would not have felt comfortable insuring it for that low, the $125K less of Dwelling coverage already accounted for the 25% additional replacement cost coverage Progressive would have given us. We also have a $1,000 deductible for wind and hail with our present insurance company. We opted to stick with the present company

We would have saved about $600+ on the auto had we switched our home back to Progressive (autos are still with Progressive) because it would have given more of auto/home discount than we are presently getting (we have a cross lines discount of having the same agent for both home and auto just not as high as having the two lines of business with the same carrier) but that savings would have been wiped out in both the wind and hail deductible increasing and lower Dwelling coverage.

The company we are with only came to our area about 3 years ago and only insures homes $400K-$3 million but insures the home for replacement costs up to $6 million IIRC. They are quite particular in location as well as PPC codes both my sister-in-law (who bought a $600K house but it is located on the other side of the state line from us) and my step-father-in-law are ineligible for coverage with this carrier for differing reasons. My sister-in-law is ineligible because they don't think her area is the best for risks (it's actually one of the nicer cities on the other side of the state line in our metro though) and my step-father-in-law's PPC code is too high (part of the risks of wanting to be in the country). In any case they were quite low for pricing in comparison to Progressive and all carriers really when they first came to our metro and it would appear they probably underpriced themselves for our particular market especially with some brutal storms we have gotten since (last May in particular).

All that to say make sure when you price out other carriers that you're getting at least the same if not better coverages.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

I might look but very few companies will write new policies in California these days.

My current company just sent me notification that if I don’t replace my roof they won’t continue not renew my policy. Not an expense I was expecting to have for a few more years.

Yeah I saw those non-renewal reasonings a decent amount plus that for new business policies (where a decline would occur but if the client got a new roof we would reverse that) when I was an underwriter. Not sure how old your roof is.

A roof that is 15-20 years old is max on most insurance companies. A roof that is more than 10 years old is going to start getting more scrutiny for normal wear and tear. A slate roof or concrete tile roofs those were treated differently as those materials are generally very strong naturally. In CA I saw a lot of flat roofs with rubber-like roofing materials a lot.

Our neighborhood is just about 20 years old, we're required to have 40 or 50 year (can't remember which one) architectural shingle roofs (which doesn't mean it's going to last that long) in our neighborhood per the HOA. It cost us for our new build home an additional $1,500 for that requirement on top of the roof that came with the new build. In any case people have absolutely had to replace their roofs in our neighborhood due to storms and we've only been here for just over 10 years which means some of those roofs were 10-ish years old some were only a few years old.

One of the places I saw that people often didn't put nicer roofs in was near Oklahoma City because they were replacing their roofs every couple of years due to storms and tornados.

 

[disneychrista]

A roof that is 15-20 years old is max on most insurance companies. A roof that is more than 10 years old is going to start getting more scrutiny for normal wear and tear. A slate roof or concrete tile roofs those were treated differently as those materials are generally very strong naturally. In CA I saw a lot of flat roofs with rubber-like roofing materials a lot.

Our neighborhood is just about 20 years old, we're required to have 40 or 50 year (can't remember which one) architectural shingle roofs (which doesn't mean it's going to last that long) in our neighborhood per the HOA. It cost us for our new build home an additional $1,500 for that requirement on top of the roof that came with the new build. In any case people have absolutely had to replace their roofs in our neighborhood due to storms and we've only been here for just over 10 years which means some of those roofs were 10-ish years old some were only a few years old.

The bold is what I don't understand. Why call it a 30, 40, 50 year if that isn't the life expectancy of the darn thing. I can't say for sure how old my roof is either. When I had the home inspection, the inspector said the roof appeared newer and that it should last another 20 years. It have been in the house 15 years. So I was expecting another 5 years or so before I had to consider replacement.

The insurer actually flies planes over insured properties looking for hazards and unmaintained items. It was such a flight that they pinged me for roof replacement. While it was not an expense I was expecting to have this year, if my roof really does show wear or damage and needs to be replaced I'd rather do it before it actually becomes an issue with leaks or whatever.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

The insurer actually flies planes over insured properties looking for hazards and unmaintained items. It was such a flight that they pinged me for roof replacement. While it was not an expense I was expecting to have this year, if my roof really does show wear or damage and needs to be replaced I'd rather do it before it actually becomes an issue with leaks or whatever.

That's common although aerials by plane I didn't see as much but obviously tech has improved a lot over the years. If I'm just talking out loud it's possible they saw a lot of granular loss on your roof or aged appearance then they matched up with how old your roof was and suspected it was getting to the end of its usable lifespan. What a roofer may think will last isn't necessarily the same as what the insurance company is looking at because usable life span and overall lifespan kinda mean two different things. It's not as commonly used as much but on wood shake roofs curling was a common reason for a new roof being needed.

For homes there's actually fairly little that an insurance company can cancel you for once you are past discovery period (that occurs when the policy is considered new business) something I know probably gets lost when talking about the insurance companies canceling policies. It's very regulated industry even in states that are more lax. On auto there are more reasons for non-renewals. On home it was mostly frequency of claims and unacceptable business on premises that I saw. Some policies were non-renewed because the home was written many years ago (and just never caught) incorrectly as in the product it was written in was not appropriate. It had to be pretty egregious for a cancel with legal notice which is done when the policy is not close to its renewal date but whatever the issue is warrants an immediate action.

I dealt a lot with that where we would get photos from the contracted out company the insurance company I worked for used where they would show what needed to be repaired such as wood rot, missing or peeling paint, roof curling or granulation, etc. They would use google maps aerial views for some things like how a property might be kept or additions to the home. It's an expense that an insurance company utilizes every so often to either send physical people out or use aerial footage. Technically insurance agents are also supposed to be doing their own inspections both at new business and over time. Couldn't tell you how many times agents would be surprised at the condition of their insureds property but couldn't deny the photos the 3rd party was taking.

I totally get not wanting that expense especially if it's not something you're having the insurance company pay for minus your deductible.

The bold is what I don't understand. Why call it a 30, 40, 50 year if that isn't the life expectancy of the darn thing. I can't say for sure how old my roof is either. When I had the home inspection, the inspector said the roof appeared newer and that it should last another 20 years. It have been in the house 15 years. So I was expecting another 5 years or so before I had to consider replacement.

I totally understand you on that one. The higher the warranty the stronger the materials are generally speaking. Another example of strength in materials is architectural shingles are stronger than normal 3-tab ones (part of the reasons our HOA requires architectural although aesthetics is also part of it, although looking at it we can only use either Owens Corning or GAF branded shingles anyhow).

The warranty is mostly about an "up to" timeframe. So a 50 year roofing warranty means coverage for the roof up to 50 years usually manufacturing defects, labor and materials, etc but it doesn't mean the roof itself is being warranted to last 50 years. However the higher warranty, the materials used are typically going to be tougher in consideration of things like wind, for hail impact resistance as well as there's also fire resistance ratings too (digging further into it our HOA requires the shingles have at least a B rating for fire which means moderate fire exposure but I don't know that it was a requirement when we moved in, it is now a requirement at least since 2018).