Hi everybody! This is Tracy Bookman owner of Homestead Roofing and we're back
again with another video in our series that top 10 roofing mistakes that
homeowners make and how you can avoid them. And we're in countdown mode and so
this time we're talking about mistake number 8: not knowing what your
deductible is. There have been times when we've been working with homeowners
especially after all the crazy storms that happen in 2018 and these homeowners
thought that they had $1,000 deductible now that's pretty standard
deductible most people have a deductible that's $1,000 but guess what?
Insurance companies are changing the way that they do things and so oftentimes a
homeowner doesn't have the deductible that he thinks that he has we've run
into homeowners who thought they had a $1,000 deductible but their
deductible was $2,500 or $4,000, $6,000
we even had two people after the 2018 storms
who discovered much to their unpleasant surprise that their deductibles were
$12,000 well so what is it that changes the amount of a
deductible and why doesn't your insurance company tell you that for
pete's sake? Well insurance companies are in business to make money and so they're
shifting a large part of the liability for the costs of storm repairs onto the
homeowner. The way that they do that is by changing the amount of your
deductible and so oftentimes an insurance company will change the
deductible from just a flat fee like a $1,000 and maybe they'll make
it percentage deductible and what that means is it's a percentage of your home
value. Now sometimes a company will just simply across-the-board change from one
flat deductible amount to another flat deductible amount. There's one company
that did that they basically gave everybody a 50% increase in the amount
of their share of the cost of repairs by going from $1,000 flat
deductible to $1,500 flat deductible. But most of the time an insurance company is
going to move you to a percentage deductibles and so again that means that
your deductible becomes a percentage of your home value. So if you get moved to
say a half percent deductible and your home is worth $400,000 then that means
that your deductible is going to be $2,000 so half a percent of
$400,000. So if you file a claim and you're expecting that your share of it
it's going to be $1,000 and you're prepared to pay $1,000
to the contractor that you hired and then all of a sudden your adjuster
shows up and says yep guess what we're going to accept your claim and you have
a $2,000 deductible. Well that's going to be kind of a shock to
you because your deductibles twice as expensive as what you thought it was
going to be. It's even worse if your deductible doesn't go to half a percent
but it goes to one percent or two percent something along that nature is
even more of an unpleasant surprise for a homeowner. So how come the insurance
companies don't tell you that? How come they don't let you know that they've
changed your deductible? Well guess what they actually do. Every year at the
renewal of your insurance you get what's called a declaration page and most
people don't read through all that fine print. Well guess what? That's where they
tell you that they're changing your deducted it's your responsibility as the
insured as the one who has entered into a contract with the insurance company to
read the contract that they're sending you every year. So what should you do?
Well before you file a claim if you've got somebody telling you what you've got
damaged and you need to file a claim always always either read your
declaration page and make sure you understand what your deductible is or
call your insurance agent and ask what's the deductible for wind and hail damage.
But if you've got any other questions about this or any other topic please
give us a call our office phone number right up here 719.433.6991
you can also visit our website that's right down here
HomesteadRoofingColorado.com. We've got a ton of information out there are lots
of other information for you, lots of tips and education for homeowners. If you
like this video please give us a thumbs up and we'd love to hear from you so
leave a comment in the and section down below. Be sure to
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at notified when we've got new videos and until our next video in this series
I'm Tracy Bookman owner of Homestead Roofing.