What You Don’t Know About Insurance Can Hurt You … Water Damage and Claims
These are important things to know about insurance, especially if you own a property and what you don’t know about insurance can hurt you - including water damage and claims. Randy Karp of Karp Insurance Services joins us. In this first of a series, we are talking about water damage and insurance claim tips. Watch our short video here:
Now I know we’re not in Texas and we’re we’ve been pretty fortunate that we haven’t had to deal with a lot of rain this year. But you know that does happen once in a while and we can have water damage and then claims to our insurance company. You have to differentiate - rain just coming in through a leaky roof as opposed to a water damage claim. Typically if there are heavy winds that blow off part of the roof and then there’s the water that leaks in - that would typically be covered. However, if the roof’s in bad repair and the water leaks in, that would typically not be covered. So when I say water damage claims, we’re seeing a lot of claims for pipes that are 40 -50-60 years old, never been replaced, all of a sudden they start to leak. It leaks into the unit and there’s a lot of water damage. Plus there could be mold damage.
Now what’s really important is you should know that mostly we see a five thousand dollar limit for mold remediation. So you can’t let those water damage claims get out of control. You got to get to them right away. One of the things we have been hearing is that there are certain types of pipes that are getting little pin hole or pin leaks in them and then after a while, I mean it takes a while before that water actually shows up on the walls and before you start to see some damage.
The first thing is if you’re noticing a difference in your water pressure, that’s usually an indication, but oftentimes people ignore the early warning signs and they wait for the water to show up on their ceiling or the walls. But once you see any of that shown up, here's your tip - you’ve just got to get to a plumber right away and stop that ASAP.
The other thing is insurance companies don’t like water damage claims. Water damage claims are very very expensive. This agent had one last year that was $60,000. And about five or six claims that totaled up over $100,000. You need to know that the insurance company is going to (may) pay for that water damage claim once. But they’re going to want to know - have you changed anything in your place? Because if you just figure the insurance company’s always going to pay out, then the insurance company is going to realize that they’re not going to want to renew you. And then you’ve got some real problems on your hand.
Something else to think about is whether the homeowner has done anything to the property. When there are upgrades, it's a good idea to let your insurance company know that you’ve put some upgrades into the home. Certainly if you’ve done some major remodeling, that really is going to make an adjustment in the replacement cost of the structure. So it's best to make sure the insurance company know what you've done with your property (upgrades), so they can continue the insurance with you and you don't get cancelled. You need to talk to your agent. Maybe you put in a pool or maybe you've done an addition, or maybe you've got a dog or now replaced old galvanized plumbing with proper plumbing. So there are a lot of things to talk about. Did you upgrade the bathrooms?
If you have anything you can share with the insurance company to show you are maintaining your property - that’s a good thing. Stay in touch with your agent. This is very, very important. It's also in their interest to keep you on as a client.
Randy can be reached at Karp Insurance Services. Some of the other places to get insurance include State Farm Insurance, Farmers Insurance, and AAA. Member of our armed forces can go to USAA.
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