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Dave Lehnert
01-28-2009, 2:22 PM
My insurance agent is closed today due to a winter storm.

We had an ice storm move through today and I have a lot of huge tree branches (some the size of a tree it self) come down. Most often during a storm I will have 1 or 2 downed trees and take care of cleanup myself. But this is going to be a much bigger project.

My question. Does homeowners insurance often cover things like this? I know insurance can differ. Just wandering if it does or not. I will call my insurance tomorrow.

Danny Thompson
01-28-2009, 2:30 PM
I had the same happen 4 or 5 years ago. Insurance only covered damages to the house and fence. It did not cover cleanup, or even the car that a tree had fallen on.

Rod Sheridan
01-28-2009, 4:04 PM
Mine covers property damage and of course personal injury in case it fell on a person.

My automobile policy covers my car if the tree falls on it, and my wallet covers the cleanup.

Insurance seems to be more complicated than it needs to be.......Rod.

Jim Tobias
01-28-2009, 4:14 PM
About 8 -10 years ago, I had lightening strike a big oak in my yard. The lightening ran in the house and knocked out a circuit in the kitchen. My homeowners insurance covered the electrical damage in the kitchen and also covered $500 (the limit on large trees) on the loss of the tree itself.

Jim

Bryan Rocker
01-29-2009, 8:10 PM
I would add thats just because your insurance policy covers it doesn't mean you should do so. Sometimes the increase in premiums down the road can outway the cost of hiring it done or having some friends come over and help......I had a claim in Oklahoma and my home owners policy went from $400 to $1,100.......

PS I live up here in Maineville and I have almost 10" of snow and 1" of ice. My 4-Runner gets around great but my poor ranger (4X2) has gotten stuck in the driveway each time.....I guess its time for a snow blower......

Sonny Edmonds
01-29-2009, 10:57 PM
We had wind damage to our roof last year.
When we contacted our home owners insurance the wife was told we would loose our 15% discount if we filed a claim.
Gee, 15%....
Or put out $6500...
15% more on our insurance...
Or $500 (deductible) and get a new roof?
Tough decision! :rolleyes:

The rain won't get in for about 30 years now. ;) :D

Tom Godley
01-30-2009, 5:55 AM
I am sure you checked by now?

There are so many differences in the way companies write policies today -- you really need to look at the policies. Some policies are better then others.

Years ago the tree removal was not written into standard policies -- but I have now seen the $500.00 limit in some.


One thing about homeowners insurance -- look at the deductible. If you can afford to raise the deductible to a high limit the saving can be quite large and the payback period amazingly short.

Small claims are very expensive for insurance companies

Robert Parrish
01-30-2009, 7:16 AM
I'm glad you guys have home owners insurance! I just got a letter yesterday from State Farm saying they were canceling mine. It seems that they aren't making enough money here in Florida and have decided to pull out. I've had State Farm for over 40 years and only filed one $1300 claim. The state is going to try to prevent them from selling any insurance if they pull out.

David Shleifer
01-30-2009, 7:42 AM
State Farm is pulling out because the state won't let them charge what they need to in order to stay afloat. Companies don't have an any extra money flaoting around, so they are trying to increase prices on everything to the point that they at least break even. If they can't do that, writing the business can put them under. This is short sited on the state's part. IF they would have let state farm increase the rates, they would not be pulling out. In the long run, when you let insurers control rates, the rates end up lower. Unfortunatly, you do get short term over pricing in some cases. Don't know enough about the Florida market to know if this is one of them.

Joe Pelonio
01-30-2009, 8:08 AM
We have had neighbors with a lot of tree damage after windstorms. Turns out that the homeowner's insurance of the damaged home pays for the repairs, not the insurance of the tree owner. So, if my tree damages your house, your insurance pays for it and you have to pay the deductible. They will not pay for any cleanup, so that's between the neighbors involved to figure out.

Dave Verstraete
01-30-2009, 8:26 AM
I'm glad you guys have home owners insurance! I just got a letter yesterday from State Farm saying they were canceling mine. It seems that they aren't making enough money here in Florida and have decided to pull out. I've had State Farm for over 40 years and only filed one $1300 claim. The state is going to try to prevent them from selling any insurance if they pull out.

Robert
I predict that you will be smiling once you get a quote from a different company. Like you, I had State Farm for years. I decided to get a quote from AutoOwners and never looked back. (I am not in any way connected to Ins. or AO)

Tom Godley
01-30-2009, 8:30 AM
This has always been the case -- We had a situation in our town where it got real ugly when a large tree fell on a neighbors garden shed.

The guy who owned the shed was out of his mind!


One thing that has changed is the wind damage clause in many policies -- some limit what is covered -- some increase the deductible for the damage. Some exclude what is considered damage -- like scratches in glass. I have also seen limits on total pay-out.

Robert Parrish
01-30-2009, 8:47 AM
You must be a State Farm Agent David. State farm made billions here in Florida in 2008. My premiums have gone up every year. We haven't had a bad hurricane since 2005. State Farm wants to cherry pick their customers and only select the profitable ones. My home owners insurance has cost me over $4000.00 a year for the past 11 years and they only paid out $1300.00. The deductible on my wind coverage in 5% of my estimated homes value. I dumped my auto insurance with them years ago.

Chris Kennedy
01-30-2009, 10:01 AM
My in-laws had a couple of their neighbor's trees fall on their property. Their policy covered the damage to the house as well as emergency clean-up (i.e. getting the tree off the house). The neighbors paid my in-laws deductible, which I think is only reasonable under the circumstances.

As for the neighbors tree creaming your house and it is your insurance -- it is considered an act of God, not an act of your neighbor. My in-laws asked the insurance people about it, since this has happened twice. Their response was the only way to somehow transfer responsibility to the neighbor would be to send a certified letter (to be able to prove receipt) stating that there was serious concern that the tree would damage their house, should it fall.

Cheers,

Chris

Cliff Rohrabacher
01-30-2009, 11:46 AM
Does homeowners insurance often cover things like this?

Open your policy and read it. It'll be in the exclusions if it's not covered.

Joe Pelonio
01-30-2009, 2:48 PM
As for the neighbors tree creaming your house and it is your insurance -- it is considered an act of God, not an act of your neighbor. My in-laws asked the insurance people about it, since this has happened twice. Their response was the only way to somehow transfer responsibility to the neighbor would be to send a certified letter (to be able to prove receipt) stating that there was serious concern that the tree would damage their house, should it fall.

Cheers,

Chris
That's what we were told too, you can be sued if you knew the tree was dangerous and did nothing about it. Hard to prove though. To be safe, when we had work done on our two 85-100' firs we sent a copy of the work order and receipt to the insurance Co. for their records.

Mike Wilkins
01-30-2009, 4:39 PM
Bottom line is this: the tree has to fall onto a covered structure to be covered. This means the house, detached garage/shed/shop/well pump house.
If it just falls onto the ground there is no coverage.

Dick Strauss
02-05-2009, 1:21 AM
Words of wisdom from my agent...

If you have a reason to be nervous about a neighbor's tree, let them know about your concerns. Once you have that conversation, they can be held liable for all damages if they don't take action to address your concerns. After you discuss it, it is an anticipated (aka preventable) event and is no longer an "act of god".

I don't know how true it is but that's what I was told...