Today, I’m gonna talk to you about what to expect during the home inspection. A lot of insurance companies will do a home inspection to determine different things about your insurance.
Why do they do this? What right do they have to do this? What should I expect? What’s going to be the process? Will I be notified?
All these different things you want to know and you’ve got a right to know them! Well, I’m going to help you to understand and break it down for you so that you can know what to expect and what the process is gonna look like. Let’s dive in!
What is a home inspection for insurance?
Here’s the deal… when buying home insurance every insurance company is going to do some sort of an inspection. It may be a digital one being online or something like that, or somebody actually going to your home to look at the outside of it. There are a few companies out there that actually send drones now, in certain communities where they’ll go and just take pictures of your house. Sometimes they’ll actually want to come and see you and walk through your home with you, just like an inspection you do, when you first buy the house. It just depends on the insurance company and its procedures.
Why do insurance companies do inspections?
There are different reasons why they would do it. But the main reason they’re doing it is so that they can understand if your home is “acceptable” or not. They determine if it is acceptable or not based on certain criteria that they have already set in place, so it doesn’t matter about things like if your house is green or white brick, but it does matter if you don’t keep up your house properly or have busted windows, or just maintenance issues that need to be addressed.
They needed to determine if you’re going to be an acceptable risk because if they take on a bunch of clients that are not acceptable, that is going to cause a lot of claims and it’s going to make the cost of insurance higher for everybody else. So certain companies are going to be very selective about who they’re going to accept as a client. It’s kind of like that old saying, you don’t want to just pick whatever friends, because some friends or bad influence on you. It’s also kind of similar with insurance. They want to choose certain clients, so that way, it doesn’t affect adversely the rates for all their clients. What they’re going to do is come out and take a look at the house, make sure that everything is up to par, so to speak.
When will they do this? Will you be notified?
They’re going to do it within the first 30 days that you buy a policy from an agent or a company. Sometimes they will do this closer to renewals as well, but not usually, and if they do it is random. Those are typically the different times, like within the first 30 days after issuing the policy, or 30 days within the renewal. Those are different times that that will happen. They are going to notify you maybe some companies do some companies don’t unfortunately. We request all of our insurance companies please let us know, so we can let you as a client know. The reality is that some just don’t inform us of when they will be sending out their inspectors.
What are they going to be looking for specifically?
They’re gonna look for a lot of everything. Above all, they’re going to look for the general upkeep of the home. They are checking to make sure there is no loose siding or shutters or something like that. Checking that there’s no debris out in the yard, different things like that. They will make sure that there are no appliances underneath the carport or garage, you know, have cars out there that are obviously unused, and the house just isn’t kept up.
Why are they looking for these different things?
Well, all these different things are going to tell them you take care of your stuff or not. You know, that is going to translate to you are you a good risk or not? It is proven with statistics that people who just don’t take care of their stuff that have these different problems are going to have more claims. And again, remember from the beginning of the conversation, people who have more claims are going to adversely affect the rate of everybody else. And insurance companies don’t need that because they’ll start losing clients. So they will decline people or send a notice to them if there are certain problems. Depending on the company, the value of the house, other things like that, they’re gonna look for a lot of things. Some of the things that are listed, but they also may want to actually come inside the home and take a look. They may want to look at the wiring or make sure the wiring is up to code or to make sure the plumbing is up to code. They want to make sure that it’s if it’s an older home, that it doesn’t have any sort of out-of-date wiring that could potentially create a fire hazard, or it doesn’t have like a breaker box or a fuse panel, they don’t like fuse panels, but it’s got breaker boxes that are really out of date, or maybe a fire hazard, they’re going to bring that up to you because you’re gonna need to address it. If you have your home and you like your home, and you try to take care of it. If there’s something you need to be aware of, don’t you want to be aware of it, so you can fix it? So you don’t have a loss on your home that’s related to a fire or something like that? That’s part of what they’re going to do is they’re gonna look for these different things to help you to know, these are things you can fix. What to do if you get an underwriting notice back
What happens if they find something, and they send you a notice? Most of the time, they’re gonna tell you, hey, you need to fix these things. And they give you a timeline of when you’ve got to fix them. And then you really need to get on it, because here’s the deal, they give you notice, they’re gonna probably cancel your insurance if you don’t fix those things. Sometimes, depending on what it is, the company may say if you don’t fix it by the next renewal, we’re not going to renew your insurance, we’re going to let you find the insurance somewhere else. In some cases, if it’s pretty bad, they may say, hey, look, you’ve got to fix this, and you get this deadline. If you don’t fix it by this deadline, we’re going to cancel your insurance, you need to find it somewhere else. Well understand, if you’re in that position, and they’re going to cancel your insurance, you’re going to have a hard time finding insurance for another company because they’re going to do the same thing. Insurance companies are very similar, they’re going to look for different things that are going to be red flags for them. And they’re going to try to help you to understand, look, they’re not out to get you. They’re there to help you to make sure that you’re taking care of your home and your property and maybe give you some guidance, because the reality is you may just not realize it. So they’re going to help you to understand things that you need to address. And then you need to go ahead and get that addressed and fixed. Hey, look, I hope that helps you to understand what to expect with a home inspection and what to do if that happens to you.
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Beaux Pilgrim, CEO
Beaux Pilgrim
Reed Insurance