Insurance on your OCNJ home

What are you OCNJ home owners doing about insurance? Up at the Cape the insurers are leaving the area and cancelling policies as some weather model indicates that there is going to be a hurricane disaster there sometime soon. If you are within a mile of the water (and we are) or even as far inland as you can get (which is not all that much farther) you are being dropped. Now it has finally happened to us. We are forced into the insurance of last resort - the MA Fair Plan. Insurance will triple for us from last year%26#39;s $450. Then we have to get liability ins. from our IL co. to boot.

Our insurance on the house will cost more than our taxes.

What%26#39;s the situation in OCNJ? If they think the Cape will get clobbered then I wonder what is predicted for the Jersey shore. Hope are you coping with this? Higher rents?

Insurance on your OCNJ home

CCC,

There was a discussion here a couple of months ago about exactly that topic - you might want to look back and see what you find.

Problem for all of us was Katrina. Back in the summer Texas put a big coastal insurer into bankruptcy because they no longer had the financial pool needed to cover the policies they wrote. That left a bunch of people in NJ high and dry and anytime the number of insurers available to the market is cut, it%26#39;s not good for those buying insurance. Bottom line is that this is specialized insurance and those that insure NJ and or Mass coastal towns also probably had a part of the Katrina coast too!

Most OC buildings have 3 kinds of insurance. Building Insurance, Flood Insurance (both of these usually shared by both units in the condo) and then insurance on your unit. In our case, when we renewed last June the Flood Insurance stayed pretty close but the building insurance went up about 1/3. Our agent shopped and saved us a couple of hundred dollars but then they took a look at our coverage amounts (the building is now 5 years old) and we were way low so in the end our total insurance went up about $1300 total split by the two owners.

Lets see if a mild hurricane season has any effect.

Insurance on your OCNJ home

This is my cost for insurance:

Building $3000 - up from $2750 last year - split between 2 owners

Flood $475 - no change from last year

Unit Owners $424 - due again in December

I was happy with this because of the previous discussions that insurance companies are dropping people due to Katrina impacts.

826,

You are exactly right. Got very nervous when I read the article in the Gazette back in July about Texas putting a coastal insurer into bankruptcy and the comment from the McMahon Agency in town that they had 2700 people covered by that company. They are our agency so I was very happy to find out that they were not our insurance carrier. Bottom line, we are all in this together and a bad storm in one area of the country will have an effect on all of us.

Wow 826, that sure puts our increase into perspective. We are really going to be paying more this year but nothing like your bill. Let%26#39;s all hope that if we ever really need to make a claim the co.will be there. Better yet, let%26#39;s hope we don%26#39;t need to make a claim!!!

I am interested in whether my rates are comparable with others in Ocean City, or if they are on the high side...

826,

our insurance is running:

Content $375

Flood $454

Building $2622 diveded by 2

For the building insurance that added a ';Terrorism Coverage'; that would have cost $300 more a year. I did not go with it. As I told the other owner I thought I could get a better return at AC with the money.

1312 - thanks - that%26#39;s comparable - good to know.