Homeowners Insurance

Here are a few of the basics that will help you make a more informed decision about your homeowner's insurance coverage's.

Insuring the home (Dwelling)

The price you paid for the home isn't always the amount that you would chose to insure it for. The majority of homeowner's companies require that your home be insured for 'replacement cost.' (The cost to actually rebuild the home from the slab up). In today's market, we're seeing most homes are actually insured for less than the purchase price  However during an economic downturn, we typically see the opposite. As professional agents, we will help you determine the replacement cost of your home, so that you are properly protected against even the most unfortunate events.

Insuring your stuff (Personal Property)

The standard policy will include 50% of dwelling coverage to cover your personal property. For example, if your dwelling is covered for 100k then most companies will cover personal property for 50k. A good way to think of personal property is anything not permanently attached to your home; furniture, clothes, electronics, etc. Some companies will allow you to increase or decrease from the standard 50% as you see fit.

Liability Insurance

Accidents happen and unfortunately when they do, lawsuits may happen. Liability Coverage helps protect you against the financial risk arising from injury or property damage that you or your family may cause to other people. It can even help provide for legal defense expenses for your day in court. We will help you determine the amount of liability coverage that is needed to protect your financial well being in such an unfortunate event. If the limits within your homeowner's policy aren't sufficient, we'd recommend a Personal Umbrella Policy that can extend your protection to higher amounts, such as 1, 2, even 3 million.

FLOOD INSURANCE IS TYPICALLY WRITTEN AS A SEPARATE POLICY, AND IS NOT COVERED BY A HOMEOWNERS POLICY.  PLEASE SELECT THE FLOOD TAB TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THIS IMPORTANT COVERAGE.

There are so many factors that go into determining the price of any insurance policy, but here are a few key factors for you to consider:

• Age of construction (any updates)
• Proximity to the coast
• Shape of roof (hip, gable, etc)
• Amounts of coverage
• Deductibles elected
• Proximity to fire hydrants and fire station
• Claim History and prior losses
• Continuous coverage, has your insurance lapsed at any time?
• Discounts (wind mitigation, burglar alarm, gated community, etc)

Homes built 2002 or later are automatically given large discounts based on the higher building code and standards they've been built to. For homes built prior to 2002, a wind mitigation inspection can have a significant impact on the annual homeowners insurance premium. We've seen discounts as much as 50%! The inspection looks at the characteristics of the home's roof (including the shape, age, and attachment) along with construction type of home (masonry, frame), and opening protection.

If you have an older home and are not familiar with the wind mitigation inspection, please contact us so we can go over this with you in more detail. And if you are familiar with the inspection but just don't know who to call to perform one, we can recommend a local inspector to you

Our agency represents several preferred homeowner’s insurance carriers in the state of Florida. Having said that, we only represent those companies with at least an 'A' Exceptional Financial Stability Rating or better through Demotech, Inc and/or AM Best. Below is a list of insurers we represent:

• ASI/Progressive Home
• Capitol Preferred
• Cypress P&C
• Edison
• Federated National
• Florida Family
• Florida Peninsula
• Lloyds of London
• Heritage
• Olympus
• Safe Harbor
• Security First
• Southern Fidelity
• St Johns Insurance
• Tower Hill Omega
• Tower Hill Preferred
• Tower Hill Prime
• Tower Hill Select
• Tower Hill Signature
• TYPTAP
• United P&C
• Universal of North America
• Universal P&C