11:48 – My morning has been eaten by carnivorous gerbils. First, I got email from a customer to whom I’d shipped a kit on 9 October with an expected delivery date of 11 October. The kit hasn’t arrived yet, so I spent the better part of an hour trying to find out what’s going on. I finally got through to someone at USPS who knew how to get an investigation started. The kit arrived at the Greensboro sorting facility, but as far as anyone can tell it’s still there. Then I spent some more time on the phone with the insurance company that we’re trying to get a policy with to insure Barbara’s parents’ house. Apparently, no insurance company licensed in North Carolina is willing to insure unoccupied dwellings, so we’re having to deal with an out-of-state company. At least I think everything is resolved there.
Thursday, 18 October 2012
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Insurance on vacant homes is a real pain. Most people do not know this but some, if not most, insurance policies terminate when a home has been vacant for 30 days or more.
When I insured my commercial property last year I had to get absentee landlord insurance (and pay $500 more). This year I am hoping that the cost will go down since I moved my business here. Of course, Texas is having big insurance problems with the windstorm coverage. Several of the insurance companies here are dropping their windstorm coverage and only covering fire and theft. Then you have to go to the state windstorm insurance company.
That’s unfortunately understandable with the insurance; unoccupied houses are magnets for break-ins and other trouble. If it’s going to be a while before you can clear the house and sell it, is there any way you could find a house-sitter you could trust?
It’s not that bad, as it turns out. It’s significantly more expensive than regular home insurance and covers less in terms of liability, but between it and the renter policy that Barbara’s parents now have, they’re covered adequately.
I spoke at some length this morning with a guy who seems to know what he’s talking about. According to him, one of the main problems particularly in this economic environment, is that a lot of people move out of a house and then burn it down for the insurance. He said that one company licensed in North Carolina formerly wrote such policies, but got out of the business because of their loss experience. Apparently, this is a very specialized type of insurance. Companies that underwrite such policies typically do only that type of business.
Or the low lives come in and strip out all the electrical and plumbing while scrape metal yards turn a blind eye.
I suppose I could put George and Martha over at Barbara’s parents’ house to guard it. It’s amazing how many people are terrified of little 7-foot Eastern Diamondback rattlesnakes.
I actually thought about this earlier. There’s a box to check on the insurance application if you have an alarm followed by “Type (describe):” I almost filled that in as “two live 7-foot Eastern Diamondback rattlesnakes, not defanged, with yard warning sign”.
Of course, George would be worthless at stopping an actual break-in. He’d just watch the intruders, hoping for a mouse. Martha, on the other hand, has a truly nasty snakish temper. She’ll actually go after people.
I got a break on house insurance premiums some years ago because of the
alarm system. On inquiry, it turned out the alarm system was my
Rottweiler.
Someone just emailed me to ask if George and Martha were really 7-footers. I don’t know. Because I haven’t held them up to measure them, and even if I did they wouldn’t hang straight down. But if anyone cares to measure them, please let me know.
George is older and bigger than Martha, in length but mainly in thickness. I’d guess he weighs close to 50% more than she does. I’m not sure how old he is. When I got Martha in 2004, she was, IIRC, about 5.5 feet and pretty slender. She’s grown some since then, in both length and bulk, but George isn’t much if any bigger. George is fairly sluggish, even when it’s warm. Martha is fast.
You want snakes that go after people then get a couple of water moccasins. They’ll chase your frigging boat in the water.
But screw all that; I live in northern VT and we have no venomous reptiles here, except down at the Snake House in Montpeculiar, the capital. Our biggest threats here are ice storms and blizzards, and folks here laugh at such trifles.
Hey, a friend in Delaware sent me this interesting little clip that shows how our numbers just do not add up, quite impossible, in fact. They mention Greece and show a burning building behind a cop in riot gear. I had to laugh; we are so fantastically bigger with WAY more people and at least a half billion firearms, maybe a billion. There will be more than one burning building and the riot cops will be disappearing PDQ once they realize what they’re up against and not being paid anymore.
http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/EW5IdwltaAc?rel=0
As your first commenter stated Most insurers in Most will not cover an empty house. I have been thru the process several times. The insurance plan in KY is called the Fair Plan. It will cover Casualty Losses and for extra bux liability.
Property Insurance varies state to state so a knowledgeable Agent is a must.
http://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/EW5IdwltaAc?rel=0
Don’t worry, a 12% VAT will take care of that problem. If not, I’m sure a 15% VAT will do the job. And if those do not work then surely a 19.6% VAT will meet of all our needs. It worked in France, did it not?
Mon-sewer Hollande and Company are whistling past the graveyard. It will be interesting to see whether or not the southern tier of Med countries will go down first with France bringing up the rear, or if they beat a couple of the others; their muslim hadji immigrant population, as in Germany, is large and tends to violence. There could be some very ugly clashes in both countries regardless of what happens in the south.
Meanwhile we get to see which useless bonehead gets the WH job in a couple of weeks and by that possibly judge how much longer we have before we end up like Greece. (in the sense that our polity and economic house of cards will fall; the effects are unpredictable with this population and its arms).
Now off to the Land of Nod, before rising early for more fun and games at the IT plantation, where your correspondent was informed today by his mangler in upstate NY (East Fishkill to be exact) that his daily duties are getting increased significantly for the same pay and crappy, minimal bennies. If your correspondent worked down in Megalopolis or out on the Left Coast doing the same stuff, he would be making at least twice as much, but also putting up with the crowds, noise, pollution, traffic, high cost of real estate, taxes, etc., etc. So there’s that.
We are all Greece.
Greece or grease?
Ja, agent is your friend. Very few know the business these days, though. My dad’s insurance business which he started in our garage when I was in second grade, was sold twice, but the woman who owned and managed it during all those years after Dad sold it, just retired this year.
The vacant Tiny House was an issue for me after my mom passed. But agent Ruth knew the regs for our state. Bottom line, we left a bed in the house, and had someone sleep there once a month. That fulfilled requirements while the house was otherwise empty and on the market.
This woman was simply amazing. After my dad died, there were 2 vehicles–his Econoline truck and my mom’s diesel Benz. Mom gave up driving a couple years before Dad died, so she only had the state ID card, no longer a driver’s license. Companies will not insure a car for a non-resident and out-of-state licensed driver. At the time, I had a Germany driver’s license, and a still in-effect Mass. DL. Since I was not licensed in Indiana, nor was my mom, I could not get the vehicles insured.
Ah, but Ruth to the rescue. Got any immediate family members who live in Indiana? Yeah, my son is in college and has an Indiana driver’s license.
Okay, he will be the primary insured, and you can be a secondary insured as an immediate family member. Two of the younger agents in the business could not figure out a way, and it only took Ruth 30 seconds to think of that. Going to miss that woman’s knowledge.
@Chuck: It’s definitely true: most agents of whatever sort – insurance, real estate, tax preparation, whatever – don’t really understand what they’re selling. Too many people get into this stuff because anyone can do so with little effort. The good agents, the real professionals, become hard to find amongst all the chaff, unless you know someone who can make a recommendation.
I remember this from my dad. He was a professional accountant to start with, then took courses to qualify himself for tax preparation, and then tried to go independent as a tax preparer. He just couldn’t compete with “Joe the handyman” who would do your taxes for a case of beer, or “Mary the bored housewife” who really just wanted to sell you her Mary Kay cosmetics.
I ran into the same thing both times I wanted to sell a house. I would be swarmed by real estate agents, mostly bored housewives, none of which seemed to know the first thing about houses or how to sell them. What should potential buyers inspect? What’s special about the house? What do you want to play down?
The first time, I let an agent try for a couple of months; the agent said my price was just too high. So I took over and sold the place (for the price I wanted) in a couple of weeks. The second time, after talking to a agents (again, lots of bored housewives) who mostly told me how awful the market was, I went on my own and sold the house the first day it was on the market. Granted, that involved some luck, but still, the general quality of agents is just awful.
Brad, see if you can get a copy of the book Don’t Sign Anything! by Australian agent Neil Jenman. When we had to sell mum’s place and get my sister’s place valued for possible sale in 2007 the advice in it was extremely valuable: no open inspections, no auctions, don’t sign with an agent for more than a month, etc.
We got over 100k more for mum’s place than we expected. Oh, and advertising degrades the value of your house, it doesn’t enhance it.
Companies will not insure a car for a non-resident and out-of-state licensed driver.
Found this out when I was disposing of my aunts vehicle. I went to an agent and got insurance for me on the car. Then sold the car in two days. I just needed something to cover me and the vehicle. One day after I sold the car I went back to the agent to cancel the insurance and was told the insurance had been canceled anyway because I did not own the car and was from out of state. I asked the agent what would have happened if I had been an accident. She did not know. I found out from my agent that since the agent had accepted the check, and issued the policy, the insurance would have been required to cover any claims. The underwriters did have the option to cancel but until that had been done the insurance was valid. However, the insurance company still kept $100.00 of my money.
He just couldn’t compete with “Joe the handyman” who would do your taxes for a case of beer
Same with photography. Anyone can buy a decent camera for $500.00. Yesterday they could not spell photographer and now they are one. Will do weddings for $100.00. I can not, and will not, compete with that. After the wedding is over most of the people that I had approached and decided on the cheap person, say they regret not hiring me. People with Marty Feldman eyes, odd poses, amputated body parts, etc.
One couple even came to me to ask if I could fix their pictures. They had odd color casts, poor exposure, elements in pictures that detracted. I said I could but it would cost twice my usual fee. They asked why and said because such repairs are very time intensive. They declined which was fine with me as I really did not want to do it anyway.
My younger nephew got married last month and the photographer was with them all day, starting just about crack of dawn and ending at the end of the reception. He had a tablet playing photos from earlier in the wedding. I must ask my sister what it cost (he seemed a pretty good photographer to me).
I’ve mentioned the professional agency before that did my sister’s wedding in 1972. The bimbo at reception ticked the B&W box when my sister asked for colour. Boy, was she ever mad.
Hey OFD, did you see this, Google’s data centers: an inside look:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/googles-data-centers-inside-look.html
Freakin’ amazing for a 14 year old company.
The data centers where I work are almost on that scale and mos def in the same ball park.
“… our first priority is the privacy and security of your data, and we go to great lengths to protect it, keeping our sites under close guard. While we’ve shared many of our designs and best practices, and we’ve been publishing our efficiency data since 2008, only a small set of employees have access to the server floor itself. ”
I about fell off the chair laughing at this, esp. the first sentence. As for the small set of high priests who are on the server floor, that would be me, too. A drone worker bee servicing the hive infrastructure but I take a tiny bit of comfort in knowing that our queen bee was once one of us and we have her email and phone and there are only about seven levels between us and her. Means nothing much, I know.
And this worker bee just had another worker bee’s stuff added to his daily workload as the other bee takes massive accumulated vay-cay and personal time shortly before probably retiring.
OFD is cobbling together his own personal five-year plan because he doesn’t still wanna be a worker bee “when I’m sixty-four.”