The Bob Dylan song, The Times They Are A-Changing, has never been more appropriate than now when it comes to Texas home insurance. This is especially true with insurance companies and how they are grappling with home insurance rates, hail claims, and how to cover roofs.
Roofs are one of those things that keeps coming up when I talk with people about home insurance in Texas. This is because roofs impact homeowners and home buyers in so many ways: they can cause the home insurance to cost more, cost less, or impact it in how a weather related claim is paid (see http://50.87.248.161/~wiseinsu/home-insurance-roofs-impact/).
Broadly speaking, there are two types of home insurance policies; actual cash value and replacement cost. There are multiple forms with various options and coverage, but they all fit into one of these two “buckets.”
Most people usually don’t think about their roof unless there’s been a recent hail storm or a damp spot appears on a room ceiling. As long as it’s not leaking, we tend to ignore it even when we see it pulling into the driveway. This past week roofs have been the subject of three conversations, two were with clients and the other with a Dallas realtor on behalf of a client with an offer on a home.
There are two broad areas of coverage in a Business Owner’s Policy or BOP; liability and property coverage. Last week I introduced liability coverage and the types of protection found in many BOP packages. This week we’ll outline the property portion of a BOP and what it’s designed to protect.
I talked with three people who are buying homes in the Dallas / Fort Worth area in the coming weeks. There are a number of questions I ask anyone buying a new home or rental property. In addition to discussing the finish out of the home it’s important to know about the updates the home has had and when they occurred. This is especially true if the home is over 10 years old. The updates insurance companies want to know about and that I discuss are in four key areas: plumbing, electrical, heating and cooling, as well as the roof.
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