Bonny
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Joined: Nov 17, 2013 10:54:37 GMT -5
Posts: 7,459
Location: No Place Like Home!
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Post by Bonny on Nov 21, 2014 18:02:21 GMT -5
You have house for $200K they want to insure at $500K because expenses high if earthquake happens. I think about cancel it because it got so high now. If there is no insurance does disaster zone money help you? I don't think so my friend had 50K damage on 500K house in Thousand Oaks, CA in the early 90s and with insurance got nothing from anyone so they couldn't make the repairs to things like brick wall in yard. I have been in a few quakes and didn't hear anything about disaster zone money but so far I didn't have damages. The recent Napa quake got some FEMA money. They tend to offer lower interest loans rather than straight grants of money.
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Bonny
Junior Associate
Joined: Nov 17, 2013 10:54:37 GMT -5
Posts: 7,459
Location: No Place Like Home!
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Post by Bonny on Nov 21, 2014 18:05:55 GMT -5
My earthquake insurance is only 680 a year and having it somehow lowers my homeowners premium. Wonder if that's just a California thing Thanks for the link Sum Dum Gai. We had 3 earthquakes today, 14 in the last week, 58 in the last month, and 545 in the last year. I only felt one But I've never experienced a: ■ hurricane ■ tornado ■ flood ■ volcano ■ typhoon ■ humidity at home ■ shoveling snow (2" max 1 time only) So all's good Mine was substantial more. I think the last time I checked it was around $2k for a two story house built in 1964. But we're also 5 miles from the Loma Prieta fault. My biggest concern is land movement as we're on a hill. No insurance will cover that hazard.
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kittensaver
Junior Associate
We cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love. - Mother Teresa
Joined: Nov 22, 2011 16:16:36 GMT -5
Posts: 7,983
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Post by kittensaver on Nov 21, 2014 19:06:59 GMT -5
Earthquake insurance isn't worth having most of the time. High deductables so no benefit for almost any damage. Something like 10% deductible so if you have a house worth 500K you pay the first 50K, you can have a lot of damage before they pay a dime. With all due respect . . . soooooooo much NOT this. Bad advice I had $70,000 worth of damage on my house after the Northridge earthquake. Using an emergency grant from FEMA, a low-cost loan from FEMA and some of our savings, we managed to cobble up the deductible; but where the *heck* was I going to get the other $62,000? That's a LOT of money . . . and don't forget - before someone blithedly suggests a home loan or HELOC, those loan are impossible to get on damaged and/or uninhabitable property. Red tagged homes are also impossible to sell for anything even close to the size of the mortgage I had to BEG first the FEMA inspector and then the insurance adjustor not to red-tag my house [long story short, it was a 1920's historic preservation home that was not bolted to the foundation and was less than a mile from where the overpass of the 10 freeway collapsed; because of its age, it also had an unreinforced chimney - thus the debate about the red-tag]. I ended up with a yellow tag, and even that was extremely problematic. I would have been screwed with a red tag. The insurance inspector told me that if the house had been located in the San Fernando Valley, it would have jumped off the foundation and collapsed. And even WITH insurance, bolting was not covered (only repair, not remediation was covered). So that was out of pocket (another 12k). I would have been soooooo screwed without insurance. Plus, it really surprises me that YM-ers would suggest what is normally the height of irresponsibility here on these Boards - going without adequate insurance coverage. The same YM-ers who are quick to talk smack about the government's over-involvement in our lives, and yet would forgo insurance and *expect* the government to bail them out in a disaster? Yeah, no. Look at how many people caught in Sandy had either no or inadequate insurance . . . many, many of them are still not back-to-whole. And you know what they are doing? Lobbying the government and heckling Governor Christie every chance they get to fix their problem . . . because they took a chance and lost. <<<Rant over>>> ETA: the deductible is not on the value of the house. The deductible is on the cost of the repairs. And unless you live in some strange kind of outlier house, the cost to rebuild it is going to be less (sometimes significantly less) than the market value of the home.
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Lizard Queen
Senior Associate
103/2024
Joined: Jan 17, 2011 22:19:13 GMT -5
Posts: 14,659
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Post by Lizard Queen on Nov 22, 2014 13:46:16 GMT -5
My earthquake insurance is only 680 a year and having it somehow lowers my homeowners premium. Wonder if that's just a California thing Thanks for the link Sum Dum Gai. We had 3 earthquakes today, 14 in the last week, 58 in the last month, and 545 in the last year. I only felt one But I've never experienced a: ■ hurricane ■ tornado ■ flood ■ volcano ■ typhoon ■ humidity at home ■ shoveling snow (2" max 1 time only) So all's good . Which one (or 2) of these is not like the others?
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Ombud
Junior Associate
Joined: Jan 14, 2013 23:21:04 GMT -5
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Post by Ombud on Nov 22, 2014 17:46:07 GMT -5
Lizard Queen, having never experienced them, I dunno. Enlighten me please
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Lizard Queen
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103/2024
Joined: Jan 17, 2011 22:19:13 GMT -5
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Post by Lizard Queen on Nov 23, 2014 9:06:10 GMT -5
Lizard Queen, having never experienced them, I dunno. Enlighten me please You listed a bunch of disasters, and then a couple nuisances. Hurricane /= humidity, kwim?
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Ombud
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Joined: Jan 14, 2013 23:21:04 GMT -5
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Post by Ombud on Nov 23, 2014 9:38:57 GMT -5
Oh. Like things you have to live with on a daily basis certain times of the year (humidity / snow). But you could move to an area that has environment that you find more palatable. Earthquakes don't bother me ... everything else on that list would. Especially humidity and snow
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kittensaver
Junior Associate
We cannot do great things. We can only do small things with great love. - Mother Teresa
Joined: Nov 22, 2011 16:16:36 GMT -5
Posts: 7,983
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Post by kittensaver on Nov 23, 2014 10:52:17 GMT -5
Wait, the deductible percentage they quote on quake insurance is the percentage of the damage? I thought it was based on the home value. Better deal than I thought. Just to be clear: the deductible is on the value of the Policy, not the market value of the home. If your home is "worth," say, 500k, your deductible is not 50k. "Worth" is an open market term. The value of the policy is based on what it is estimated it would cost you to rebuild it. A 500k home will not cost that much to rebuild. It will probably only cost a quarter of that to rebuild. And your deductible will be a percentage of that (repairs/cost to rebuild). Sorry I was not clear.
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Deleted
Joined: Oct 11, 2024 4:19:55 GMT -5
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Post by Deleted on Nov 23, 2014 17:46:58 GMT -5
I live near the New Madrid fault. I have earthquake insurance. With all the warnings that we're due for a "big" one, I'm afraid to risk not having it. Knowing the history of the earthquake kitten saver mentioned is scary. It boggles my mind that an earthquake made the Mississippi River flow backwards. I can't imagine the devastation that would occur now with all the structures that weren't around back then. My inner child still thinks of earthquakes like they use to be depicted in movies sometimes, huge deep cracks opening up in the ground.
One morning a few years ago I woke up and could have sworn I woke up because my bed was moving. Since it wasn't moving any more, I assumed it was a dream or my imagination and went back to sleep. When I got out of bed a few hours later, I turned the news on, and we'd had an earthquake.
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Lizard Queen
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103/2024
Joined: Jan 17, 2011 22:19:13 GMT -5
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Post by Lizard Queen on Nov 23, 2014 22:52:35 GMT -5
Oh. Like things you have to live with on a daily basis certain times of the year (humidity / snow). But you could move to an area that has environment that you find more palatable. Earthquakes don't bother me ... everything else on that list would. Especially humidity and snow Ah, gotcha. I'm used to snow, so that doesn't bother me. I'm not sure about earthquakes, as I've never experienced one. As for a humidity, you'd have to ask me during a heatwave, cause it actually sounds nice to me when it's cold out.
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Ombud
Junior Associate
Joined: Jan 14, 2013 23:21:04 GMT -5
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Post by Ombud on Nov 23, 2014 22:55:02 GMT -5
Most earthquakes are 4 or less so no big deal if the bldg has been retrofitted
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