Wellington Homeowners- Top 3 Ways To Get Homeowners Insurance Discounts
Local home inspectors and insurance agents offered some advice to homeowners to qualify for discounts on your homeowners' insurance policies. These top 3 home improvements may also help to protect your home during hurricanes and severe storms.
It is very important that you meet the most recent state and county building codes and other requirements established by the Office of Insurance Regulation's inspection form to verify your discounts.
1. Replace your roof if it is old. Replacing a roof is expensive. It can cost you anywhere between $6000 to over $50,000 depending on the size of your home and the type of roofing you choose. We chose a composition tile roof to replace our wood shake roof a few years ago and we spent about $22,000. But we were able to get a huge discount on our homeowners' insurance policy because we also had it built to code, added hurricane safety features which have made us feel much more safe during hurricanes.
When Hurricane Wilma caused us to lose power for over 20 days, our roof was not damaged at all. You should definitely replace your roof if it is over 25 years old and it is composition shingle roof. If you have a tile roof reaching close to 50 years old, it should be replaced. According to insurance agents getting a new roof to code is the absolute biggest improvement you can do to get the biggest discount on your Wellington homeowners' insurance policy.
2. Protecting your windows is a big savings. You should have hurricane shutters or hurricane- impact glass windows. Getting hurricane shutters can cost from a few hundred dollars to over $10,000 depending again on the size of your home and how many windows and patio glass doors you have. Impact glass is more expensive but it is better because you don't have to go out and put up your hurricane shutters when there is a storm. The best way to do the impact glass is a little at a time unless you can get a big discount from an installer for buying all your impact windows and doors at the same time.
We decided to do ours in steps. When we remodel a room in our house, we make sure we budget for replacing the old windows the house was built with, with new hurricane impact glass windows and doors. We just finished remodeling another room in our home and the impact glass was one that Home Depot had in stock so we did not have to special order it. It was $378.00 for the window and it measures about 48x 56. So that is a good sized window. Hurricane impact glass is also good for security. The best part of hurricane impact glass windows is that you don't have to cover them up during the storms so you can watch the storm go by and also have natural light in your home especially if you lose power during the storm.
Some insurance agents are saying that if you have shutters that were made before 1996 the insurance companies are not giving the discounts for those.
3. Replace your garage door with a Hurricane 5 impact garage door. Make sure that when you make these improvements that you take photos of the improvements. Also, make sure you take a photo right before the storm and then after the storm. Keep those in a file. Sometimes insurance companies deny claims if you don't have the proof about the condition of the improvement prior to the storm.
We replaced our garage door with a hurricane impact garage door that is stated to withstand up to a hurricane 5 storm. Of course, the rest of the house may not withstand a storm of that magnitude so this is more for the comfort of knowing it is a safe garage door. Since our garage door is not used as a garage door we had additional reinforcements added to the door frame.
Remember too that all these improvements help you to lower your electric bills so you are getting more than a homeowner's insurance discount, you are also getting more safety features, security features and energy savings with these improvements.
We are not attorneys, we are not inspectors and we are not insurance agents and we are not providing you with legal advice.
For more information contact the Department of Financial Services Insurance Consumer helpline at 877-693-5236. Please contact the department to confirm any of the proposed upgrades and also get a written statement from your insurance company before you spend the money on the repairs if you are doing so for the discounts.
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