The Real Estate Zone Week 18 Was All About Fire Safety With Mitch Wagner!
The Real Estate Zone Week 18 Was All About Fire Safety With Mitch Wagner!
Our week 18 show was all about fire safety with our special guests Mitch Wagner, Attorney at law and Ted Bumgardner, president of Xpera Group. One of the first things we pointed out, was that the fire season was upon us even though we just had rain the day before and we wanted to make sure that our listeners and everyone they knew paid attention to how much fire danger there really is San Diego County currently. Mitch made a point to let our listeners know that a large percentage of homeowners today in San Diego County are underinsured and need to contact their insurance company as soon as possible to review their coverage and make sure it's adequate for today's building costs and property values. With regard to value we pointed out that there are a number of properties being sold today locally that are actually valued upwards of $200,000 below what the actual replacement value is. We urged all of our listeners to contact their insurance company to make sure that they have adequate fire insurance for today's construction costs and codes.
One of the items that we made sure he made note of were changes in fire in fire and building codes that have taken place since the wildfires a few years ago. Ted pointed out that many fire departments and local municipalities are requiring for instance that homeowners in outlying areas replace their gravel 10 foot wide driveway with 24 foot wide paved driveways with hammerhead turnarounds so that fire trucks can pass each other on the drive ways while they are trying to fight a fire. Many of these homeowners simply are not covered nor do they have the wealth that it takes to meet this requirement and so many are left out in the cold and are not able to rebuild after the wildfires. Another casualty of being underinsured.
Is not difficult we determined, to document what you have in or around your home in the case of a fire. Take 15 to 20 min. on a Sunday afternoon with your video camera and videotape the insides and the outside of your home commenting on the different valuables and possessions that are located inside and outside your home. If need be, you can go get someone who doesn't live in your home as not used all of your belongings to point out anything you might be missing in your inventory in your home. Take all of your valuable home papers, your videotape and anything else that you feel like you might need in case of a fire and store it electronically on either a cloud server or one of the many backup services that are available online for a nominal fee. Another suggestion would be to take all of those items or at least copies of them and put them in a safe deposit box at a local bank. The idea is simple the actual taking of time and making sure that you do it is the more complicated part. Make sure that you take a few minutes and that you're prepared in case the absolute worst takes place and another firestorm happens during our fire season and your home is destroyed. One thing in particular that we pointed out while were on the air was that when there's a firestorm like we had a few years ago there were actually five wildfires in San Diego County at the same time and several hundred homes were destroyed. Insurance companies brought insurance adjusters and other employees in from other states around the country and when they're dealing with homeowners in San Diego County and there from back East for instance all they're looking to do is make sure they protect the insurance companies interest and get done with that homeowner so that they can get home where there has not been several hundred homes destroyed and there are not a lot of people with really frayed nerves. So just like the Boy Scouts always say, be prepared.
If you miss any of our shows you can listen to them for free 24 hours a day seven days a week by podcast on iTunes by visiting the real estate zone page on www.760KFMB.com.
As always thank you for listening.
We'll see you on the radio.
The Real Estate Zone radio show
Comments(0)