What Should You Be Discussing With Your Insurance Agent?

San Fernando Valley Real Estate Podcast with Scott Himelstein

There are a few factors that can affect your homeowners insurance policy in ways you might not expect, which is why you should discuss these things with your insurance agent.

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Now more than ever in our Southern California region, it’s important that you talk with your insurance agent about how much coverage you have in case disaster strikes. For Zachary Schneiderman of Schneiderman Insurance Agency, most people he works with or who call him for a quote just end up asking him to match their current coverage. The problem with this, though, is your current coverage isn’t always correct, and a lot of people don’t know how much insurance they really need to rebuild their home. According to Zach, the purpose of having a homeowners insurance policy is based on the idea that if something was to happen, how can an agent such as himself replace your home as it was and get you back to normal? As time goes by and you make upgrades and renovations to your home, those changes change the value of what it would cost to rebuild that home. That’s why it’s never a bad time to call your agent and ask them to give you an updated cost estimation of your home and verify that you have the right amount of coverage. Another issue to consider is how long you’ll be out of your home because of how long it takes to rebuild. Depending on the size of your loss, you can be out of your home longer than expected. It doesn’t seem like it would take that long to rebuild a home, but for a large loss, you’re looking at a rebuild of anywhere from 18 to 24 months.

It’s never a bad time to call your agent and ask them to give you an updated cost estimation of your home.

Another problem is a lot of insurance carriers out there only offer 12-month loss of use coverage. If you have to move your whole family, that might not be enough to rent the kind of home you need while your original home is being rebuilt. Oftentimes in this case, people end up paying out of pocket. Also keep in mind that when you have a loss, you’re still paying the mortgage on your home—the insurance company just pays for the additional expenses you wouldn’t normally incur.
If your home is older, building code changes can also affect your insurance policy. The standard coverage of a homeowners insurance policy is meant to rebuild the home in the manner it was built. If you don’t have a policy with sufficient code upgrade coverage, you’ll have to pay out of pocket to make certain changes. The costs of these changes can be substantial, so make sure you have coverage that allows you to get by without paying more than what your deductible was in the first place.
If you have any other insurance questions or you’d like to have your policy reviewed, you can give the Schneiderman Insurance Agency a call at [phone].
If you have any real estate needs, feel free to give us a call or shoot us an email anytime. We’d be glad to help you.