Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Frustration

Ever since our basement was re-finished I have had "call insurance company about flood insurance" on my to-do list. Today I finally called and was very surprised with what I found out. Well, surprised AND frustrated.

As it turns out, to be covered for a flood you and two of your neighbors need to have flooded, or your home and two acres of surrounding land. Even then, mostly just your appliances are covered in the flood, like a washer and dryer, hot water heater, etc. No furnishings. No flooring. Nothing else is covered by water damage. Not only that, but if we were to just have some kind of random leak in our basement, it wouldn't be covered even if we did have flood insurance. So, we could pay $326 per year for flood insurance in the case of something fairly major happening, or do nothing. Of course, you know what will happen in THAT case . . .

The frustrating part comes from the fact the we never looked in to this before we bought our house. I never questioned what the insurance company would cover. When I heard that flood insurance is separate from regular insurance, I decided I should call, and even then it never occured to me that water damage wouldn't be covered. Learning so, so many lessons from this house . . .

We have done a few things to help protect our basement from water damage, but still, you just never know. Our house is practically 100 years old. The seller was a shady asshole. He absolutely would (and quite possibly did) hide any flooding issues that the basement may have. I take a wee bit of comfort in our basement doing totally fine in the torrential rains that we had last weekend. I know that some people's basements did flood during that, but ours didn't. Clearly one weekend of rain isn't a good measure for an entire rainy season in Seattle, but it's something, I suppose.

I'm frustrated. I think this whole home buying thing is a trial by fire sort of a deal. Every time something like this comes up I think "why didn't someone tell us?!?" but that is no one's fault but our own. We needed to ask.

Here's to the driest next few months (years?) in Seattle's history!

1 comment:

  1. I read this article the other day about insurance companies' definitions of flood differing from the definition of regular people.

    http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Insurance/AvoidRipoffs/5-things-never-to-tell-your-insurer.aspx

    For example, "To an insurance company, "flood" means water from a nearby lake, stream, river or other body of water." I wonder if rain water damage would even be covered with a flood policy.

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for taking the time to comment on my blog!