Ten Secret Ways Your Homeowners Agent Could Cost You Your Home
The Ten Part Series Your Home Insurance Agent May Be Hoping You Will Never See!
Secret Way Number Two - What If Your Home Was Destroyed By Rising Waters and Nobody Paid?
Do you like sleeping in the rain? Me too! The gentle beating of the rain on the roof has a definite soothing effect on practically everyone. But imagine going to bed one night with it raining like crazy. And imagine it continuing all through the night. Then the next morning when you swing your feet out of bed you feel moisture instead of the floor, and there are two inches of water flowing through your house. And your neighborhood is flooded. Where would you go to get the money to repair your home? Don't look to your homeowner's insurance company because no homeowners policies EVER include coverage for rising waters, also called flooding¦NONE of them.
A Real Life Nightmare
Jessie Philson, who lived in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans, learned the hard lesson of not having flood insurance after Hurricane Katrina. She carried it until she retired. But she dropped it in an effort to save a little money. And, according to the October 18, 2005 Fort Worth Star Telegram, when she finally was able to see the damage to her home for the first time after the storm, she burst into tears. "It's going to cost a fortune," Philson said with a sigh. "I don't know what we're going to do."
Some Amazing and Scary Statistics
The sad fact is that the majority of the people in the United States do not carry flood insurance, often because they have been advised against it since they do not live in an officially designated flood zone. However, the flood maps from which these recommendations are made are sadly out of date and often dangerously incomplete in alerting people to their “100-year flood zone status. And the people that are just a few feet from the designated flood zones are often just as likely to get flooded should a hard enough rain fall. Also, due to its proximity to the coast, practically all of Florida is in some sort of a flood zone.
Authorities have stated that virtually NOBODY is immune to flooding, and the National
Flood Insurance Program has found that it is the most common natural disaster in the
United States. And were you aware that according to their Programs statistics, 20% to 25% of all flood insurance claims are filed in LOW TO MODERATE risk areas¦areas probably very similar to your neighborhood.
An Important Question
This brings up a very important question: has your agent ever offered you flood insurance? If not, why not? Either he knows and understands the risks you face and doesn't care enough to ask you about it, or he is uninformed and not even aware you need it. Either way, how would that make you feel about your agent's professional negligence should your home be either totally or partially destroyed by flood?
How to Protect Yourself
So how can you make sure you don't wake up tomorrow to a soggy nightmare? First and foremost, you have got to find an agent you can trust. Insurance is entirely too complex or the typical person to fully understand all the ways you could be hurt and the pros and cons of every possible means of avoiding loss or insuring against it. And the best agent for the job may or may not be the least expensive. But even if their rates are slightly higher, wouldn't it be worth it to know someone has your back, is competent, and cares enough to make you aware of all the ways you can be wiped out financially. In that way, at least you have the opportunity to decide what you do and don't want covered.
______________________________________________________________________
This has been the second of ten ways your homeowners agent could cost you
your home. If you would like to discover the other nine ways you can view them
in video format by going here: www.10SecretWays-FL.com.
This has been a public service of www.FloridaPanhandleHomeInsurance.com.
The Ten Part Series Your Home Insurance Agent May Be Hoping You Will Never See!
Secret Way Number Two - What If Your Home Was Destroyed By Rising Waters and Nobody Paid?
Do you like sleeping in the rain? Me too! The gentle beating of the rain on the roof has a definite soothing effect on practically everyone. But imagine going to bed one night with it raining like crazy. And imagine it continuing all through the night. Then the next morning when you swing your feet out of bed you feel moisture instead of the floor, and there are two inches of water flowing through your house. And your neighborhood is flooded. Where would you go to get the money to repair your home? Don't look to your homeowner's insurance company because no homeowners policies EVER include coverage for rising waters, also called flooding¦NONE of them.
A Real Life Nightmare
Jessie Philson, who lived in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans, learned the hard lesson of not having flood insurance after Hurricane Katrina. She carried it until she retired. But she dropped it in an effort to save a little money. And, according to the October 18, 2005 Fort Worth Star Telegram, when she finally was able to see the damage to her home for the first time after the storm, she burst into tears. "It's going to cost a fortune," Philson said with a sigh. "I don't know what we're going to do."
Some Amazing and Scary Statistics
The sad fact is that the majority of the people in the United States do not carry flood insurance, often because they have been advised against it since they do not live in an officially designated flood zone. However, the flood maps from which these recommendations are made are sadly out of date and often dangerously incomplete in alerting people to their “100-year flood zone status. And the people that are just a few feet from the designated flood zones are often just as likely to get flooded should a hard enough rain fall. Also, due to its proximity to the coast, practically all of Florida is in some sort of a flood zone.
Authorities have stated that virtually NOBODY is immune to flooding, and the National
Flood Insurance Program has found that it is the most common natural disaster in the
United States. And were you aware that according to their Programs statistics, 20% to 25% of all flood insurance claims are filed in LOW TO MODERATE risk areas¦areas probably very similar to your neighborhood.
An Important Question
This brings up a very important question: has your agent ever offered you flood insurance? If not, why not? Either he knows and understands the risks you face and doesn't care enough to ask you about it, or he is uninformed and not even aware you need it. Either way, how would that make you feel about your agent's professional negligence should your home be either totally or partially destroyed by flood?
How to Protect Yourself
So how can you make sure you don't wake up tomorrow to a soggy nightmare? First and foremost, you have got to find an agent you can trust. Insurance is entirely too complex or the typical person to fully understand all the ways you could be hurt and the pros and cons of every possible means of avoiding loss or insuring against it. And the best agent for the job may or may not be the least expensive. But even if their rates are slightly higher, wouldn't it be worth it to know someone has your back, is competent, and cares enough to make you aware of all the ways you can be wiped out financially. In that way, at least you have the opportunity to decide what you do and don't want covered.
______________________________________________________________________
This has been the second of ten ways your homeowners agent could cost you
your home. If you would like to discover the other nine ways you can view them
in video format by going here: www.10SecretWays-FL.com.
This has been a public service of www.FloridaPanhandleHomeInsurance.com.