VOCAL Neighbors

Homeowner's insurance issues - reposts

From October 2004:

One gentleman that I spoke with last night told me that long ago, he had the opportunity to landmark his row home on Lincoln. Was he glad he did not! As it turned out, a neighbor wound up doing renovations to the row house next door. Could not get any indemnifications for construction-related damages. The neighbor wound up cracking his stone foundation. What was homeowner's insurance willing to pay for? Someone to caulk the crack, a minor repair. What would he have had to do if his home was landmarked? Aside from the permitting process, he couldn't have used caulk; epoxy is not considered to be historical building materials. He would have had to replace a nearly 8 foot wide stretch of stone. None of it covered by insurance Do that out-of-pocket-expense math...

And another from October 2004:

One issue that has not been given much attention is homeowner's insurance. We've done some initial checking, and it looks like if you are in a landmark district, it is extremely expensive to insure your home for replication purposes. Normally, if the roof falls in, or you have a kitchen fire and need to re-build, the insurance company assesses what it would cost to repair with modern-day materials, and that is the sum of your reimbursement. But, if you are landmarked, that won't be good enough; you are not allowed to rebuild with modern-day materials; you have to essentially replicate what was previously there, with historical materials, to historical standards, etc. Since the replication costs are outside normal insurance costs, what you have to do is massively over-insure your house to hope that the $$$ will be there. Neither Allstate nor State Farm offer policies for replication costs. [Update: we've learned that if you can get homeowner's insurance through the standard companies, it is not through their normal process; you have to go to their "high risk" program, which is completely separate from their usual homeowner's insurance underwriting process, and costs much more.] No matter what, you are looking at a jump in premiums. Yet another hidden cost of landmarking that no-one wants to talk about.

posted by The Grants @ 2:54 AM