I’ve received calls from two different clients over the past two weeks. Each was about the same thing; they’d received a notice from their mortgage company notifying them of a deficit in their escrow account. They had the option of paying the escrow shortage or it could be factored into their already increased monthly home mortgage payment. Sheri and I also received the same notice a few weeks earlier.
I received a text message from one of our car insurance clients last week. Her car had been broken into and a ring was missing. She wanted to know if the loss of the ring was covered by her car insurance. It’s not; whenever an item that is not a part of the car is stolen from a car, it’s considered a home insurance claim…
On Saturday, April 26, a low pressure front swept out of the Rockies across Texas, the southern plains, and across the southeast. It collided with moist air from the Gulf spawning 36 tornadoes over 8 states ranging from Arkansas to Virginia. As if the tornadoes weren’t enough, the same storm system dumped 12 to 18 inches of rain across Alabama and the Florida pan handle before swinging up the Atlantic coast causing widespread flooding.
Hurricane season runs from June 1 through the end of November. Hurricane forecasters at Colorado State University climatologists and the Tropical Storm Risk group in London predict a lighter than normal hurricane season for 2014. Both groups believe this due to cooling in the Atlantic Ocean and the re-emergence of El Nino. CSU forecasters predict 9 named storms with 3 hurricanes, 1 severe with winds greater than 110 miles per hour, while Tropical Storm Risk predicts 12 named storms, including 5 hurricanes with 2 being intense.
On March 22nd, a hillside that was saturated with water from earlier rains gave way. A wall of mud, trees, and debris swept over the North Fork of the Stillaguamish River and covered an unincorporated area known as Steelhead Haven located 4 miles east of Oso, Washington. Mud, trees, and other debris covered an area of Steelhead Haven measuring 1,500 feet long, 4,400 feet wide and between 30 and 40 feet deep, roughly 1 square mile.
One of my clients in Frisco, Texas sent me an email last weekend. Her family’s home is located in a neighborhood that was struck by hail, some of it measuring between baseball and softball size. A flurry of roofers showed up in their neighborhood and began knocking on doors to solicit business and my client wanted to know if she should file a hail claim.
Flood insurance popped up on the national news feeds in late March of this year. The Biggert-Waters Flood Reform Act of 2012 (BW-12) went into effect in October of 2013 impacting home and business owners along coastal areas of the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic Ocean, as well as in the Missouri River Basin (see http://50.87.248.161/~wiseinsu/flood-insurance-reform-act-of-2012/).
The floor for the Final Four is laid and ready at AT&T Stadium, the home of the Dallas Cowboys. Additional seating has been added, the concert venue has been prepped and the countdown to the tip off for the NCAA’s Final Four is well underway. College basketball’s flurry of activity to crown a national champion is one of the biggest sporting events of the year, only rivaled by the NFL’s Super Bowl.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve had the pleasure of working with two retired people in the Dallas / Fort Worth area. What they have in common is quite admirable, they own their homes outright. One paid off the mortgage while the other person paid cash for their current home. That, however, is where the similarities end. The person that paid off their mortgage dropped their home insurance when the mortgage was paid in full, while the person that paid cash for their home continues to maintain a home insurance policy.
hink about the last time you purchased something, anything at all. Let’s say it was a can of soup. Imagine the canned food shelves are crammed and disheveled as you look for your brand. You’re getting annoyed. The first couple of cans you spy are dented and the labels torn. In fact, is that a rodent’s dropping on the top of that one? Disgusting!
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