This is the place where you and your family live, you want to be safe, and you want to make sure that it’s covered adequately, right? Remember, we have four promises, number one is that we want to make sure that your policies are protecting you and your assets and your home is your number one asset you have so we want to make sure that we take care of that. We’re gonna talk about some of the different things that are excluded and included in your homeowner’s policy, so let’s dive into that.
Infestation
I know it sounds really gross, right? Infestation is like rats, rodents, bugs, roaches, molds, and things like that are typically not included. These are different infestations that you can have, that are really more of a maintenance issue. These are things that you should be taken care of by your exterminator, or maybe making repairs, if you let things go unrepaired in your house, it may let an opportunity for either rodents or something like that to infest your house. This is not covered by insurance, because they look at it more as a maintenance thing. What can you do? get an exterminator to make sure that you keep up your place.
Intentional Damage
If you have a child and they are just really destructive and they go outside and they beat on the bricks or the siding with a hammer, that’s not going to be covered, you’re gonna need to take care of that yourself because that’s going to be something intentional. Let’s say that you just making repairs to the house and you mess up and you cut through your wood floor, that’s not going to be covered because that’s also kind of an intentional thing. What about maintenance for wear and tear? Your policy is not a maintenance policy, It’s something designed to take care of unexpected losses. Wear and tear is something that’s expected, your flooring and roof are expected to wear out, depending on what roof you have, the life expectancy of the roof is anywhere from 15 to 30 years. The policy is not designed to replace it because it just wore out and if it gets damaged by storm-related incidences or something like that, it’s going to cover that but we’re in charge of the care and maintenance of our home.
What about an earthquake and flood?
In Louisiana, we don’t have a lot of earthquakes but I do have a video about earthquakes and we actually have a fault line between Louisiana and Mississippi. There have been recorded incidences in the last year in Texas and Arkansas as well. Earthquakes are something that’s typically not covered but you can endorse this to your homeowner’s policy, if you can’t endorse it, you can buy a separate policy for that either through the state government or through another insurance company.
Earthquake Insurance: All you need to know!
Earthquake is one of the numerous perils that we have no control over, but what we can do is be prepared and protected. Earthquake Insurance is one of the things that will help you protect your family and your home.
What about a flood? Is it something that’s not covered? If your pipe bursts, that’s covered by your homeowner’s policy. As long as you have the correct policy, some of those are actually excluded but on a typical homeowner policy, like what we sell it’s going to be included underneath that policy. A flood that we’re going to talk about is actually the rising of water either because of Creek, River, or Lake overruns. We have excessive amounts of rain that cause flooding to one or more lots or more than a couple of acres of land and it affects your house. The water gets into your house and causes damage, but that’s not covered by your homeowner’s policy. What you can do is buy a separate flood policy, there are both private and public options, “public” meaning through the federal government through the NFIP. We sell those policies in both avenues and there are different options that you can apply for flood insurance.
Damages from Power Surges
Let’s say the power company has some sort of a power surge and it causes damage to your appliances or your gadgets, it’s not typically going to be covered by your policy but if your house gets struck by lightning, that’s something different. All the damage that ensues because the lightning strike blows out your TV, iPod, Laptop, and other things are going to be covered by your homeowner’s policy. What’s not going to be covered is if your power company has a surge that does damage to your home, then you can add this as an endorsement. You may talk to your insurance company but not every insurance company will add this but that is an option.
How about Nuclear Hazards, War, or Governmental Actions?
These things are not covered. If we have a nuclear hazard, nuclear meltdowns, nuclear war, or just war in general, you probably won’t be here to file the claim, so they’re not going to cover it.
During the pandemic, we had some different areas that had civil unrest and the government shut down different areas, and didn’t allow things to get into your business or your home, that’s a governmental action and its aim is for the good of the public. Insurance companies typically don’t give you coverage for that, that’s just one of the things because the claims would just be so widespread that they just could not, there’s no physical way that they could afford that. If a company or somebody comes in and just loots your business or your house, that is covered. If it’s, purely about governmental action, that’s not going to be covered and that’s not something you can buy.
These are some different things that are excluded by your homeowner’s policy, I hope this helps you to understand that the primary purpose of your homeowner’s policy is to take care of things that are either not widespread that nobody’s gonna be left or leave us a “zombie apocalypse”. It’s designed to cover storm-related things, and fortuitous things that we don’t expect could happen because of something that’s not our fault.
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We’ll be glad to take a look at your insurance coverage in any of the states of Louisiana, Texas, Arkansas, and Mississippi.
Thank you,
Beaux Pilgrim, CEO
Beaux Pilgrim
Reed Insurance