Homeowners Insurance – Do You Really Know What’s Covered – The Stephen Cooley Real Estate Show

In today’s episode of the Stephen Cooley Real Estate Show, Stephen and Julie Storm discuss the homeowners insurance. This insurance is required when you’re buying a home, so most of you have it. But did you know that if you have just the basic coverage, you do NOT have flood & earthquake insurance?

Don’t wait until the hurricane’s coming, don’t wait until the earthquake’s predicted because you’ll get NO coverage. The right time to make the decision is before these things happen.

Renters are the #1 group that has no insurance. Renters insurance covers everything you have inside a home – and it’s so cheap to cover your content.

For more useful information watch this video:

STEPHEN: Hello, I’m Stephen Cooley and welcome to the Stephen Cooley Real Estate Show. As always it’s a great pleasure to have the beautiful Julie Storm on the show with me.

JULIE: Always pleasure to be here Stephen.

STEPHEN: Welcome to the show Julie, and we just got through Irma which wasn’t as big deal as we thought it would be and we’ve got another hurricane bearing down on us. I’ve got lots of great friends in Houston, Texas who are realtors, and they’re just going through such a hard time there. It’s devastating.

JULIE: It is.

STEPHEN: Glad Irma didn’t hit here. I survived Hurricane Hugo in a real estate.

JULIE: Myself.

STEPHEN: And really no one closed on a house for about 90 days because we all lost our roofs and tree damage and all that kind of thing so I just wanted to take today to talk about our homeowners insurance and I did interview Corey Hinson this morning with Allstate who advertises on the show and he’s a great person to reach out to because his knowledge and his office knowledge about insurance is just incredible.

JULIE: Yeah, there’s a lot of questions about that because we don’t necessarily live in a floodplain and things like that so there’s unique things that can happen,  the game changer.

STEPHEN: So when we call in and get homeowners insurance when we’re buying a home it’s required if you get a mortgage on your house, so most of us have it. We really just get the basic coverage and the basic coverage gets you through, makes your mortgage company happy and makes you happy. There’s things that are not covered, and I just want to hit those really quickly – you do not have flood insurance, you do not have earthquake insurance. We do have floods here, Rock Hill’s had a flood before. Rock Hill’s had earthquakes before we actually have earthquakes in South Carolina almost on a daily basis somewhere there just one or two. But if you look at the history of the world, South Carolina is a high prone earthquake area. We all know that about Charleston, but we’re only two and a half hours away. You do not have earthquake insurance. You do have insurance for rain water falling on your home, but once water starts puddling whether it’s from a creek or a river or just starts puddling enough, you know if we get 20-22 inches of rain, it’ll puddle in your yard. If that water does damage to your home you have no coverage unless you have flood insurance.

We do have earthquakes here, we’ve actually felt them here before, you have absolutely no coverage if you have the basic plan. So you definitely want to think about those and just make a decision. This is a key point when an earthquake’s headed our way, they do predict earthquakes now when they’ve predicted an earthquake in our area, which they did about 5 years ago.. about 10 years ago I think it was called the Madrid fault line, you cannot get coverage. So don’t wait until the hurricane’s coming, don’t wait until earthquake’s predicted because you’ll get no coverage. Last week all insurance companies stopped issuing insurance because we had a hurricane bearing down on us. So no one could even close on a home the last few days of last week. So just make sure you really think about that when you’re getting the coverage or if you already own a home and have coverage, now when there’s no hurricane coming and there’s no earthquake predicted, it’s a very inexpensive time to get that coverage on your home.

JULIE: Yeah, because I tell you the flood, especially water damage is something that you..

STEPHEN: ..and then the mold that comes after water. Houston’s under major mold problems now and it’s just been a week since then. So now people can’t go into those homes and even work because of the mold. Also additional insurance to think about is if you have collections, if you have a rare painting, if you have a very expensive coat you can list those items on your policy and you may pay a little bit more for the policy but that particular item is covered at the full value if you will list that as a rider on your policy. We have a lot of people when we sell them homes that have a certain collection that’s irreplaceable and so you definitely want to list those as additional content.

JULIE: What about people that live in town homes and stuff, but that’s kind of a difference situation, isn’t it?

STEPHEN: Exactly, thank you for bringing that up. Most of the people you know if a hurricane hits here, and you have coverage, you’re okay. I mean insurance is gonna put you up, it’s gonna replace everything, it’s all the people out there Julie, who are renters or live in townhome and condos because the townhome and condo association may pay for the building. You had no coverage inside for all your blowings. So for townhome condo owners it’s called townhome condo insurance, and it really covers from the paint and work. Then you have renters insurance and most of renters do not get renters insurance because it’s specific to the property and it’s very cheap. It’s just covering your content and renters insurance will cover everything you have inside a home so a lot of these people that you see displaced in Florida and Texas right now have no insurance because they were renters and so a renters definitely need to get that insurance. Again the time to get it they had a lot of calls last week asking for flood insurance and nobody could get flood insurance. The time to make the decision is before these things happen. Additional coverage that you can get is water back up, sewer backup those that things actually back up and coming into people’s homes sometimes, you don’t have coverage for that. Building code I just saw in Florida where a left side of the road was built last year, the right side of the road was built 10 years ago, new building code in Florida requires you to build for a category 5 hurricane. Left side of the road – no home was harmed, right side of the road – every home missing. So you can get building code. So if building code requires better shingles, better gutters, better exterior you can get those things if you have building code insurance in addition to your basic.

So great information there because we really want to be covered, insurance is inexpensive for what it covers. But we really want to be covered when these things happen, so we’re not desperate and we lose our homes, and we lose all our belongings, and we have no way to replace those items and again I just want to bring up one more time – renters are the #1 group that has no insurance. And it’s so cheap to cover your content. It will put you up in a hotel, it’ll replace all your belongings, your clothes, your furniture, and you really need that insurance. I have rental property and we beg our renters to get insurance and almost none of them do. So Corey Hinson with Allstate advertises on our show and they offer all these things, you may have an insurance provider already, you definitely wanna give them a call and talk about these additional policies.

JULIE: Great information, Stephen.

STEPHEN: Thank you for being on today’s show. We’ve got beautiful homes for sale in your area. We’ll be right back.

I hope you’ve enjoyed watching The Stephen Cooley Real Estate Show. If you’re interested in advertising your business on the program, please give us a call at 803-326-2777. Join us next week for more discussions on real estate topics and help in finding your perfect home. Thanks for watching.