It was TIME to quit teaching for sure after 30+ years officially and 20+when needed

One of the screwy things about a new roof is that the depreciation schedule is 27.5 years, same as the whole house, yet insurance companies consider the roof to be worthless if it's more than 10 years old. They all ask how old the roof is when shopping for insurance, and some will reject you if the roof is older than 10. The IRS doesn't align with reality.

Same with appliances. 5 year depreciation, yet nothing comes with more than a 1 year warranty and they're designed to start failing after that.

 

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Insurance companies are the slime of the earth. If you fight them, they cancel your policy. They do not care about the people they insure.
Farmers canceled 21 of my policies because they no longer wish to insure rental properties, second homes or liability policies.

 

Tell me about it. Farmers took my money for many years on a rental, then suddenly out of the blue cancelled me because of hail damage. So I filed a claim. Now I can't get new insurance for it because of the claim. Give us your money but don't you dare ever ask for anything in return or we'll blackball you. I got more stories...

 

It is really bad in Florida regarding the insurance problem. The new insurance scam is requiring people to get a new roof every 10 years. My roof just turned 10 this year and they can kiss my rosy arse, it is still solid as the day it got replaced. I got rid of the close by trees and the roof is loving it.

 

What kind of roofing are we talking about? I know most asphalt shingles are good for around 25 years. No?
The architectural shingles are better than the normal style. What do they use in FL. anyway?

 

I suspect you weren't either!

"Talking college Science teaching" was stated!

What was your specialty?

I remember, harassing teachers, where I'd suggest we discuss your misunderstandings in the "boiler room", after the evening specialty adult science education class, I wrote/taught.

I love teaching!

 

I still haven't had any problems with the "seamless" metal roofing installed over the original shingles on my 45 year old home, and the only appliance replaced was a clothes washer which had an item left in my pockets destroy the cover closure/cycle-start-switch!

I will agree that the replacement washer was designed by a heavenly minded committee to be minimally earthly good, where a blanket covering the water
removal port will allow the device to operate continuously!!

Nothing fancy, only functional really increased longevity, which I agree may not be normal today!!!

 

The washer I have in that about to be fully depreciated house is a 1998 Frigidaire. I've replaced the shocks three times, belt, drain pump, drum bearings twice, and most recently a spring broke and dropped the drum, which apparently continued to run for a bit before the tenant yanked the plug or it clunked to a halt. Miraculously that didn't damage anything. It's still running fine after 27 years. Replacing the drum bearings is a major project that the manufacturers clearly do not want you to do - on this one they only sell the drum half with the bearings installed, which is $600 if you can find one. I'm on a mission to not let them win! If you learn to do this stuff yourself, you can stick it to The Man.

 

These are some of the reasons the insurance gave me for canceling a policy. Each reason was for a different policy.
1. Crack in small window on side of garage. It took a few minutes to fix but they would not renew the policy.
2. Hole in gable siding. Two inch bird hole. Had to wait 2 weeks to fix hole. There were baby birds in the nest. Insurance still canceled.
3. Storm window missing on back of house. The window was there, just raised for a window AC unit. Insurance still canceled.
4. Garage door needed fresh paint. Easy fix but insurance still said No.
5. Ivy growing on brick. Easy fix but still said No.
6. Tree limb near roof. That limb had been removed over a year ago. Policy still cancelled. They were looking at old images of the property.
7. Ten year old roof with minor hail damage. Roof replace but still it was No.
8. You have owned the house for a while. I loved that one. They used it to cancel two policies.
9. Bricks loose on front of house. They were correct. It took about an hour to repair. Still canceled.
10. We will no longer insure rental property. First honest answer.
11. We will not insure your second home. You can only have one.
12. We won't insure this rental property. When I told them the house was vacant, they renewed the policy. Figure that one out.

For some reason, I became an easy target. They went to every house looking for a reason to cancel. It's legal and they did it.

I got even and they really hate me now. I filed a claim on every house for hail damage and what's called code coverage. They had to pay to re-deck every house and replace the roof. These were 30 year roofs that were only a few years old. I had to pay a bit but all the roofs and decking are now new. They paid about 12K and I paid about 3K per house. I was legal and they knew they could not fight it in court. I paid for that coverage. I paid about 45K and they paid over 180K.
I'm honest and play fair in all my dealings but insurance companies may never get there.

I'm sorry @desertgem for taking your thread so far off track. I'm happy your move went so well. Would love to hear the details of how your property trade worked.

 

I guess I have been blessed insurance wise. A company named North Star Insurance is located 12 miles north of my home. I refinished their corporate office floors in 1986: the same year I bought my house. I screwed up and started out with an insurance company that turned out to be worthless. I switched to North Star at some point (1991?) and have had more than a half dozen claims paid. Like anything in life, you can't paint everyone or anything with a barn brush. James

 

I'm curious what the outcome was on all of these. Did another company insure them? If so, which one(s). Or did you go uninsured for a while?

A version of #6 happened to me. They all jumped into the drone craze and took aerial images of the roofs. Then they cancelled two of my policies for "roof damage." They droned them within a day of each other and put the wrong images with the wrong houses. I talked to half a dozen people saying, look at these images. The aerial roof images on this one are clearly not from that house, and same with the other house. These people were all incapable of comprehending what's right there in front of them. Finally after it went through some kind of review, a few weeks later they reinstated one policy but not the other one. They've also cancelled me three times for "branches touching the house" which, same as you, was stupid. Nothing was touching the house.

Sigh.

 

I

I found new insurance really fast. They found no issues with the properties. They wanted my business.

 

What company? PM me if you don't want to post publicly.

 

Any good insurance companies for large personal umbrella policy where you can have underlying coverage with a different insurance company? My $5M Umbrella went from $600 to $1,500.

 

And I'm looking for an umbrella liability policy that doesn't require underlying coverage. The biggest risk of physical loss is hail or wind damage to the roof, and they've proven that they won't cover much of that anyway. So I'd like to drop that part altogether. The chance that the house will burn down is almost zero and I'm spending thousands a year on each house for nothing. My biggest concern is getting sued over some stupid thing.

 

I had a $3M umbrella on everything but Farmers just canceled it and gave me no options. I looked around and found nothing that was reasonable. I'm having to just go with just the $300K I get on each policy. I would rather have something much higher.

 

They seem to all be in "take the money and run" mode and I think they're shooting themselves in the foot. That company you recommended privately wouldn't insure my bellwether property because it's been uninsured for too long (41 days and their cutoff is 30 days). I've had primary and landlord policies for 37 years and have only filed ONE claim for actual physical damage (another was a burglary long ago and another was for living expenses during a fire evacuation). I realize they've incurred major losses from fires and hurricanes over the past few years, but they can't recoup that by dumping all their good customers over some idiot's evaluation of "risk."

 

I don't believe there is any carrier that offers an umbrella policy with zero underlying coverage. The nature of an umbrella policy is that it kicks in only after the limits of an underlying policy is exceeded. It is an extra layer of protection against liability. How can it be extra if there is no primary coverage in an underlying policy?

 

This seems like a reasonable summary of umbrella policies...

https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/insurance/umbrella-insurance

 

All of the examples there involve "underlying coverage" though. Maybe nobody has a plain liability policy, although I don't understand why not. Perhaps I need to be looking at business liability insurance. Someone like a real estate agent or a consultant would have that without having any physical business property to insure.