As an insurance professional, I recommend using timers to manage cooking times. But I still manage to set off the smoke alarm every now and then in my quest for perfect bacon! A long time ago, I lived in an apartment that had an old oven. Somehow, we learned that we could cook Tombstone pizzas and the smoke alarm would tell us when the pizza was done. I’m sure this had to do with forgetting all about the pizza one night and the smoke alarm reminding us about it!
This is similar to how we deal with roofs. We usually don’t think about our roof until we are “alarmed” by something like water damage from a roof leak or missing/damaged shingles from a storm. That’s when we decide to contact our insurance agent to see how our homeowner’s policy will respond. Insurance companies have been keeping notes on all this, and with the storms and hail we’ve had in the last few years, the number of roof claims have gone up. Throw in some serious inflation, and these more frequent roof claims are getting more expensive!
Changes are coming to how insurance companies insure roofs and they’re not all responding the same.
- Some insurance companies are no longer covering an older roof with replacement cost coverage.
- Some companies are charging a deductible based on a percentage of the home’s rebuild value instead of a fixed dollar amount (some large, national insurance companies have been doing this for years).
- Some are offering a nicer new roof discount, because newer roofs don’t leak and fare better in storms.
- Some are raising the deductible for the whole house.
- Some insurance companies haven’t yet changed much about how they’ll price their homeowner’s insurance products to address roof losses… but they likely will in the very near future!
This is the “new normal” that you might be introduced to the next time your homeowner’s policy renews. Your insurance agent is happy to explain how these changes will impact you. As always, insurance gets better when you have a good conversation with your agent!
