Hello Everyone,
If you read my previous posts you know that my wife and I put a bid in on a Historic Home located in Mount Dora, Florida. The sellers have accepted our offer and we are now waiting on Bank of America to okay the price. We will be waiting a while, from what I understand creation didn’t take as long as the decision making process does on a short sale.
We are running into one issue that I could use some advice on. We are trying to get someone to underwrite home owners insurance on the home and are running into a brick wall. It seems as soon as they find out that the home is almost 100 years old the phone either goes silent or we hear laughing at the other end. I have been an AllState customer for almost 20 years now and they won’t touch it, State Farm told me they are not writing any new policies in Florida. We could always go with the State insurance, but the rates are very expensive.
Anyone have a suggestion as to who to call to insure a vintage home? Thanks in advance!
That seems very strange. A lot of insurance companies are in century-old buildings. I know a couple of insurance companies decided to limit their exposure on Florida, but surely the town is still full of insurance agencies. Why not ask your new neighbors for recommendations?
I will be doing that next time I am up there, but since it is a new town to us we really don’t know anyone and it is about an hour away. We need to have the insurance in place for the financing, so time wise much easier to try to get done via the internet and the phone. The agencies that I called (AllState and State Farm) were the local agents in the town. They referred us to some really small agencies which might not be a bad thing, but as with all insurance I want a company who is going to be able to pay up if the insurance is ever needed.
As always, I turn to the SD because of the diversity of the members. Someone here always seems to be able to steer me in the correct direction, saving tons of wasted time.
Oh and FWIW, I am told one reason that insurers don’t want to insure old homes is the cost of replacing the home. An outright loss isn’t too hard to compensate for, but for a partial loss that would require the rebuilding of the structure is a nightmare. To get not only the correct materials, but the correct architectural design and to find craftsman capable of that period work. It all ends up to be quite expensive.
Must be a Florida thing, because we live in a house that is over 100 years old and our agent (one of the larger, older companies) would have very little property insurance business if they didn’t cover old houses. I’ve never even heard of an insurance company questioning a policy based on age of the house. Weird.
You might want to think about changing your car insurance to whatever company you get to provide your home insurance, because the sort of behavior you’ve described needs to be discouraged.
We have been told by one agent that in order to insure this house we would need to switch our car insurance to the company he is recommending as well, for they only write “multiple policies”, not sure if he is serious or not. However, Florida is a very frustrating place in general to try to insure a home. I have had many discussions with others at how hard it is to find new insurance for a house, no matter the age. One of the problems is the hurricanes which of course strike with some regularity here. It seems that the insurers don’t mind taking 20 years of premiums without one hitting, but as soon as one hits and they have massive payouts they start screaming poverty and refuse to write new policies.
The insurance comminsioner for the State of Florida at one time threatened to ban several companies from ANY business in the State if they refused to write homeowners policies. It seems that certain large insurance companies wanted the lucrative auto policies, but didn’t want to take a chance of writing homeowners policies in case of another hurricane. I can understand thier reluctance as the damage is so widespread when one hits, but you can’t be willing to only take in money for premiums and not take the risk of payout when disaster strikes.
It has gotten so bad here, especially for those who live in costal areas, that the State of Florida is actually selling homeowners insruance so those who can’t get it anywhere else can get something. The problem being is that it is very expensive. The other problem is that insurance companies are raising rates on homeowners that have never had a claim to cover losses incurred in other areas of the State. My parents have been with the same insurance company for 30 years. They did have one major claim after a hurricane that destroyed their home about 8 years ago, but zero other claims. Recently they recieved notice that their premiums were rising 300%! It’s insane …
Whatever insurance you go with, make sure it also includes “code” coverage - as in, if there’s a loss, they’ll pay to bring the house up to whatever the current building code requires. That would handle things like electrical, plumbing, etc. that have had the rules tightened up since the house was built.
I would think that even a total loss would be an issue, since you’d have to make sure that outwardly the place looked the same (style-wise) as it currently does.