Wednesday, August 1, 2007

Home owner's insurance nightmare

My home owner's insurance is a nightmare. I purchased my home two years ago, got the home insurance for around $700 a year. Then a few months later my mortgage company sends me a letter:

Did we forget to mention? You need additional windstorm insurance, we've happily applied some of ours at a hugely inflated rate for the few months since you've owned the house and adjusted your escrow to pay it. If you find your own insurance, let us know. Enjoy your new mortgage payment.
I wrote back complaining that they never told me about windstorm insurance and that I could have signed up for it in the first place, and didn't feel like I should be paying insurance for previous months for a disaster that never happened. Thanks for taking 3 months to bother realizing your mistake, and thanks to the insurance company and the mortgage company for never even mentioning that I needed this insurance. Oh, and thanks for telling me it's my fault and to pound sand when I complain about it.

So I go out and get my own insurance, which is cheaper, but my home owners insurance has still tripled. Our mortgage payment went up $200 (I inquired with a lawyer, btw, and they advised me that there was nothing I could do about it). Nightmare over? Hardly.

6 months later the insurance company that holds my windstorm policy goes bankrupt. So again I'm scrambling to find a new insurance company. I do, but now my insurance rate is again higher by a couple hundred dollars. Again, my mortgage payment (escrow) goes up.

Now my insurance policy is renewing. And apparently the complete lack of any hurricanes for the last 2 years is causing the rates to increase again! I get to pay another $25 a month for home insurance.

I'm going to shop around, but if its anything like the experience I had last year, the place I'm with is already going to have the lowest rate. Which begs the question; how much can we possibly pay in insurance before the citizens begin to riot?



1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Unbelievable. I work with quite a few guys that live on the coast and commute and an hour inland. There insurance rates are two to three times the cost of mine being just an hour inland. The increases have become out of control and it does not seem like the government in my state, Florida, is able to do much about it.