Pre-Black Friday, Black Friday, and Small Business Saturday has come and gone and today is Cyber Monday. In case you missed it, there are 24 more shopping days till Christmas, so you have plenty of time to find the perfect gift for loved ones or yourself!
A client sent me an email last week stating he has a roof leak in his north Texas home which was probably caused by hail.
There are a number of factors which go into the computation of your home insurance premium including age, construction type (brick, wood frame, etc.), age, and roofing material. In addition, there are factors that shape the replacement cost of your home’s insured value which has a direct correlation to what you pay for insurance. These include the number of square, how many stories, the number of living areas, number and grade of bathrooms, kitchen grade (see http://50.87.248.161/~wiseinsu/kitchens-bathrooms-and-home-insurance/), and is there a fireplace or swimming pool.
There are many factors insurance companies consider when determining a home’s replacement cost, how much it takes to rebuild a home in the event of a total loss (see http://50.87.248.161/~wiseinsu/home-insurance-replacement-cost-actual-cash-value). Kitchens and bathrooms are two room types which have a significant impact on a home’s replacement cost.
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/).
Texans have paid among the highest rates for home insurance for at least the last ten years. Jockeying with Texas for the state with the highest rates have been Florida and Louisiana, while Oklahoma and Washington D.C. have rounded out the top five.
Last week was National Fire Prevention Week. While the number of structure fires is down by 10% from 2013, there were still over 1.3 million fires reported, or one every 65 seconds. Every 2 hours and 42 minutes, a person dies from a fire, which is up by 13.5% in 2013. There were over 3,200 fire deaths last year, of which, 3 out 5 may have been averted had there been a working smoke alarm in the home. Even where smoke alarms were present, 23% of all home fire deaths were attributed to smoke alarms that didn’t make a peep.
A storm rolled through Dallas last Thursday with straight line winds between 75 and 90 miles an hour. The rain fell sideways and the wind snapped tree limbs, toppled trees, and knocked out power to 300,000 homes and businesses. 85,000 homes and businesses were still without power as of late Saturday.
Last week I introduced 5 things no home insurance policy covers. These are acts of war, nuclear meltdown, flood, earthquake, and sewage back up (see http://50.87.248.161/~wiseinsu/home-insurance-doesnt-cover/). It would be nice to think our home policies cover everything, but they don’t. In fact, last week’s list was only a partial list of what home insurance policies don’t cover. Here are three more items no Texas home insurance policy covers.
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