Personal Finance Tips

Those who own a mobile home often ask if there’s a type of insurance that is something between home and car insurance and is suitable for covering their property. The answer is positive, as there is a special type of insurance products designed to cover mobile homes, and they are relatively inexpensive, with premiums of about $250 per year. And if you really want to make sure that your mobile home will be paid for if it gets damaged, it’s not a big price to pay for certainty and some peace of mind.

This type of insurance coverage makes part of general liability insurance coverage. Claims filed under this type of insurance usually deal with medical costs, lost income, trauma and sometimes property damage. Typical mobile home policies have the same aspects of coverage as ordinary home protection, including the actual replacement and repair costs of the house, injuries sustained by other people (besides you and your family members) on your property, living expenses if you have to dwell in another location due to repair, and the items contained in your home. The main difference here is that the same coverage applies while your house is on the move, too. And as with any other type of insurance, the rates vary significantly from one company to another.

Home insurance whether it’s a mobile home or a typical house is first and foremost used to protect your property from such hazards as fire, storm, and theft, acts of vandalism, natural calamities, explosions and technological calamities. The items contained within your home will also be covered, including furniture, equipment and valuables such as jewelry (to an extent).

And just like with ordinary houses homeowners insurance quotes for mobile homes can vary significantly from one provider to another. The Insurance Information Institute strongly suggests having at least three quotes from different providers before buying a policy. However, the more quotes you have the higher are the chances that you will find a suitable policy for a low price. This is especially useful if you are new to the whole insurance market and don’t know where to start.

Still, mobile home coverage has certain peculiarities that set it apart from the usual homeowners insurance you would purchase for your house. The main feature is that you can benefit from free continental travel coverage, which protects your mobile home financially regardless of where your home is located in the country at the moment.

However, the hidden catch with mobile home coverage is that in most cases it is based on actual cash value of your home, which puts a strong emphasis on depreciation that lowers the replacement cost of your mobile home with each year passing. Still, the policy will cover all the equipment and special features that were initially installed in your mobile home. Read your policy careful before signing it in order to learn which particular items and situations are covered and which are not.

Most mobile home owners neglect the importance of insurance for their homes, believing that it’s not mandatory and taking account the rare use of it. But even if you do not use it quite often and it stays near your house most of the time it doesn’t mean that nothing can happen to your property, and losing something costly due to own negligence is not the smartest thing to do.

The business of insurance is called underwriting. The company enters into a contract (called a policy) and agrees to indemnify a group of people like you against defined losses. So it uses some heavy duty math to work out the probability of the losses being incurred. It’s called risk assessment and relies on a complicated use of statistics. For vehicle insurance, the companies collect the details from every reported traffic accident in the US looking at the age, sex and occupation of the driver, the make and model being driven, the time of day, the road conditions, and the extent of the damage. The insurers share the information on the current costs of replacement parts and the labor to fit them.

They also manage to talk the health insurance companies into sharing their current costs on medical treatment for those injured in traffic accidents. With all this information, they can make good estimates of the cost of loss, i.e. the total amount they may have to pay out if they insure, say, 100,000 drivers. They take this estimate, add the cost of running the insurance company and a profit margin. This total is then divided between all the 100,000 as their premiums. Some companies divide the total equally so the good drivers subsidize the bad. But the majority adjusts the individual amounts based on the driver’s safety record. That way, each policy holder pays more or less depending on how well he or she drives. This is more fair.

But, to cut costs, some insurance companies make more general assumptions about the likelihood of losses. Instead of personalising the risk assessment, they focus the assessment on generalities. The most common is the use of the zip code. In some areas of a town or city, there are higher levels of vehicle theft and vandalism. Some areas have more people driving while intoxicated or impaired through drugs. Because of the design of the local road system, there may also be a higher number of accidents. The insurers therefore charge everyone living in those areas a higher premium. Apart from the unfairness at an individual level, some lawyers believe it is active discrimination because many of the zip code areas loaded with higher premiums have higher concentrations of particular racial or ethnic groups. California has formally prohibited insurance companies from using zip codes, credit scores and other factors not directly relevant to the assessment of driver safety. In those states, insurers continue to trade and make a profit. It has not been the end of the world they predicted.

So, depending on the US state in which you live, your premium may either be calculated based on your personal driving record, or it may be based on your zip code and credit score. Either way, the task of finding the cheapest car insurance remains the same. You have to shop around the companies licensed to sell policies in your state and find the best deal. If there is active competition between the insurers, the premiums will be lower and you will find cheap car insurance without too much difficulty. But if the state is unregulated and insurers do not compete, it will be more difficult to find a cheap policy.

This might sound strange to you if you have spent the money on putting an insurance policy in place, but there are times when you should consider not making a claim. It really can protect you from greater losses if your premium rates suddenly rocket up or, worse, the insurance company decides it would prefer you to take your business elsewhere. So let’s take it one step at a time. Almost every policy imposes a duty on homeowners to make claims either within a set time or a “reasonable” time. If you miss out on a time limit, you have no right to claim. When is a claim made on a “timely” basis? You will be expected to notify the insurer of a theft or vandalism within days. Reports of serious damage will be expected within two weeks and certainly never longer than 30 days. This can put you under pressure if the policy requires you to get estimates from local contractors, but no-one ever said a policy was going to be worded in your favor. So, if you have reliable estimates of the amount lost and/or costs of repair, now comes the big decision.

As a general rule, you should only make claims if the amount is greater than the deductible. If you are going to pay out of your own pocket in any event, silence will benefit you in most cases. However, be careful if there is a third party liability element involved. Suppose the wind lifts two or three roof tiles and one blows down into the street, hitting someone on the sidewalk. The cost of repairing the roof may be small but the risk of a major claim for personal injuries cannot be ignored. Always make a claim when you cannot put numbers on a possible third party claim. Now comes the difficult part. Every time you make a claim, it’s recorded in a national database called the Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange (CLUE). If you make multiple smaller claims, or one or two large claims, this will stay in CLUE for seven years and may deter other insurers from writing a policy for you or encourage them only to quote high premiums. You should therefore consider absorbing losses up to $3,000. You may be lucky – the insurer pays your claim in full and does not raise the premiums. But suppose you have a deductible of $1,000 and the insurer raises your premium for $500 for the next two years. You never know the real costs of the claim until after the event but setting a higher minimum amount for a claim gives you a margin of safety. You should at least break even on the smaller claims.

Dealing with claims shows the homeowners insurance companies at their best or worst. The best pay and do not try to recover their losses by increasing your premium. The worst immediately deny your claim and fight you on technicalities. Never forget every state has a Department of Insurance to deal with complaints against insurance companies. If you think your company is unreasonably denying your claim, make a complaint. There are also attorneys who specialize in insurance matters and, if the claim is for a big amount, it may be worth getting formal legal advice on your rights. Homeowners insurance is not “cheap” and you are entitled to fight to recover the costs of repairing or replacing your home so long as the damage falls within the defined perils.