homeowner insurance question..

I’m sure this is a question I should call tomorrow about, but i’m online shopping around for some homeowner insurance.

I have a question about the dwelling insurance.

Basically they want you to enter a number what it would cost to rebuild your house, should it be a total loss.

This number seems like it would be more than the price I paid for it?

Also how did you guys go about getting the distance to the fire department in miles, and the distance to a fire hydrant in feet?

I kind of expected they would have this information from the property address, but I guess not.

Thanks…

Your agent will have info on Fire dept. stuff.
2 ways to insure, actual cash value= they give you what it would cost to buy a similar home.
Replacement cost= Cost to build the same home from ground up(more than purchase price).

when my girlfriend did ours she put in the value of the home for what we bought it for basically. They called back and said the actual value was about 35k higher because it was the cost of rebuilding the house from the ground up.

When I was getting homeowners last year, they suggested the cost of rebuilding my house to be over twice what we paid. Go figure.

sigh.

PM Testicle.

I’m going through the same thing with getting homeowners. They plugged the information of my house into the computer and it came back with a crazy $225k replacement value which is about 3 times what I paid for the house. As a result I’m just picking a number out of the air (probably like 100k) that will be enough to get me into another house that I’m happy with. No need going crazy on homeowners even though it’s always good to have a little more than the house is worth.

As for the distance you can always take a drive and just read the odometer. I think they’re just looking for a rough estimate anyways. It was easy for me as there are no hydrants around me and the fire dept (vol) is right across the street.

What companies are you looking through? After shopping around I found out allstate was the cheapest by far…I even saved like $500 on car insurance and they haven’t even calculated in the discount for multiple policies.

+1. This isn’t some 5000 car you’re trying to insure, it’s the single largest purchase you’ll probably ever make. Get an agent to help you figure out how much coverage you need.

they are going to tell you that you need to insure the cost to rebuild the same size home with the same amount of rooms and amenities etc. brand new. This is obviously going to be more than what you paid for it (unless you just built the house). You will want to do this anyways because homeowners insurance is so friggin cheap anyways you’d be stupid not to.

I think I’m insured something like 275K + 35K external structure (for the garage) and I pay $490 per year I think

you’re missing the point, the insurance is to build a replacement home, not move to another home.

No, I get that. Buy why pay twice the amount of insurance if I don’t need to? There are obvious benefits to it but $225k is going to buy a lot more house than I need around here.

OH man i can help you out. give me a call i could be writing here for hours. i don’t want your place to burn down and you won’t get anything for it 716-725-1021

I sincerely hope you are incredibly lucky in life.

I’m not sure what I’m missing here. The coverage I’m looking at is more than enough to buy a house better than the one I’m insuring and probably in an area I like more. Even if I did get the money to fully rebuild my house I doubt I would want to anyways, it takes month to rebuild when buying a house can be taken care of in half the time. It’s not like I’m insuring a 100k house for 50k…it’s an 80k house insured for 100k.