If you leave your house empty for too long, you could lose your home owners insurance — and your home equity if a fire or other disaster destroys or damages your house.
Insurance companies hate vacant houses, whether you’re taking a extended vacation or you’re moving out of town and leaving your house empty. If you’re not home and a water pipe busts, a fire starts, or someone breaks in, chances are the subsequent mess is going to be pretty big — along with the insurance claim for the damage.
If you’re lucky, your insurance company will let you leave the house vacant, but just won’t pay for certain things like broken glass, vandalism, or malicious mischief. At worst, your home owners insurance company will yank your policy if you go away and leave the house unattended for a month or more.
Some companies, like State Farm, decide on a case-by-case basis whether you can keep your policy when you’re temporarily not living in your home, especially if you’ve got a plan to take care of the place while you’re out of town.
Say you’re going on a two-month, around-the-world cruise (lucky you!). You’re more likely to keep your coverage if you hire a company to shovel the snow so your home looks occupied while you’re gone.
Some insurers will cancel your policy if your house is vacant for 30 days. If that happens to you, call a commercial insurance broker like Select Insurance group at 636-410-6219. Commercial agents sell insurance to landlords who have vacant houses all the time — during renovations, or when they’re between tenants-otherwise known as "vacant home insurance"
Expect to pay about 15% to 20% more than you were paying for your regular homeowners insurance.
The bottom line is that if you’re heading south for the winter, read the fine print in your home owners policy to see what it says about vacancies. Then, email your agent or insurance company to double-check the rules. Don’t call, because an email is a written record of your communication. You might need that record later if the company refuses to pay a claim because your house was vacant.
Have you left your house vacant for more than a month? Did you check your home owners insurance policy before you left?
http://www.selectinsuranceteam.com/selectinsuranceblog.html
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1. Prohibit pre-existing condition exclusions for children in all new plans;
2. Temporary high-risk pool for Americans with pre-existing conditions;
3. Insurance companies no longer able to drop sick people;
4. Lower seniors prescription prices by beginning to close the donut hole;
5. Tax credits to small businesses covering employees;
6. Elimination of lifetime and annual benefit limits;
7. Children can stay on parents' coverage until age 26;
8. New plans must cover preventive and immunizations;
9. Consumers will have processes to appeal insurance plan decisions;
10. Rebates to enrollees from insurers with high administrative expenditures and public disclosure of the percent of premiums applied
to overhead costs.