Earthquake insurance

[k3am]

S/O insurance policies that people carry.. maybe not relevant if you don't live in an earthquake area, but if you do, do you carry earthquake insurance on your home?

[bee20]

I do. It used to be only a couple hundred dollars per year and now it's almost a thousand. This bums me out, but I'm also not sure what building prices would be post-earthquake in this area so I keep forking it over.

If I wasn't tied here regionally by friends and family I think I'd risk my place being leveled and just selling out for the value of the land if the big one hits.

[konapoppy]

I live in a liquefaction zone. I imagine it would be fairly expensive, but maybe worth checking out.

[quesyrah]

We do. I live in Southern CA so I figured better safe than sorry?

[jewel]

I don’t.

I live in Ca but not in a super risky earthquake area - about 90 minutes from the Bay Area, so likely to feel earthquakes but unlikely to have major damage.

Earthquake insurance is expensive and doesn’t cover a whole lot. I can’t remember the specifics, but the last quote I got was like $1000 a year for 50% of our dwelling value, or something. It’s not like regular insurance with a premium and low deductible. It would probably only be useful in a total loss earthquake situation, and I’m just saving my money and hoping that doesn’t happen.

[k3am]

We're currently paying for it.. I think it's like $1500 a year, we have a $80k deductible, and I can't for the life of me remember how much it would pay out up to, but I know it's no where near what our house is worth, I think like $500k maximum?

[ny96]

Aug 4, 2022 20:28:50 GMT -5 quesyrah said:

We do. I live in Southern CA so I figured better safe than sorry?

Same

[savan]

We are in SoCal and do not. While it is true that I could list my home right now and probably sell for 1 million, the majority of that is for the land it is sitting on. The house itself is only worth about 300k. With the huge deductible, that means the insurance would only help in the case of catastrophic loss. If that happens, we could still sell the land to get out from under our mortgage or hopefully take out a second mortgage to rebuild.

While I am usually pro insurance, I’m not sure the risk of catastrophic loss is worth the cost of premium.

[Deleted]

I have some small coverage through my HOA otherwise I wouldn’t have it.

I’m in the Bay Area. 

[wildrice]

Aug 5, 2022 21:26:00 GMT -5 goldengirlz said:

We do. DH got a down payment assistance as a benefit through work and it was required.

It’s a friggin’ fortune, more than homeowners and we have something like a $90k deductible.

That's insane! Can people take out loans for deductibles? I can't imagine very many people are able to carry this insurance if the deductible is that high.

[JayhawkGirl]

I live in Kansas and we carry it. It’s a nominal amount and we have the new Madrid fault, which has been inactive for a long time. I figure if the worst case came true, the house isn’t built for earthquakes and we will be glad to have it.

[formerlyak]

We live in So Cal near many faults and don’t have it. All our financial advisors and even my insurance company advised against it. It’s expensive, the deductibles are high, and if there was a catastrophic quake, there would likely be so many claims and not enough money to pay them out. The house we own and rent out has survived several large quakes, and our last tenants were so nervous about earthquakes that they hired a structural engineer to come inspect t to see if it was a safe house structurally. The report came back that it was. And the house we live in is only 6 years old and very current on all earthquake codes.

[quesyrah]

Aug 9, 2022 8:10:44 GMT -5 formerlyak said:

We live in So Cal near many faults and don’t have it. All our financial advisors and even my insurance company advised against it. It’s expensive, the deductibles are high, and if there was a catastrophic quake, there would likely be so many claims and not enough money to pay them out. The house we own and rent out has survived several large quakes, and our last tenants were so nervous about earthquakes that they hired a structural engineer to come inspect t to see if it was a safe house structurally. The report came back that it was. And the house we live in is only 6 years old and very current on all earthquake codes.

This is exactly what we were just told by our new agent! That there likely wouldn’t be any large payouts and therefore it’s largely a waste of money.

Our old agent sold us on it because we have so much equity in our house. He told us the more equity you have, the more important it is to have earthquake insurance.

Our new agent said that the amount of equity in your home has nothing to do with it, which make sense now that we think about it.

We did not renew our policy.

[jlt19]

We have it near St Louis and I feel like it’s just a standard thing everyone does? I’m honestly not sure what the extra cost is. The deductible is crazy, 15% I think, but again, it’s just one of those things I’ve never really questioned.

Now I shall!

[niq]

We live in Seattle and don't carry it. Every time I think about it, I look into what the policies look like and decide that we'd just take out a construction loan to rebuild. Or ... not.

Like a lot of PPs, about 70% of our home's value is in the land.

[CloudBee]

We live in CT, our family is pretty insurance heavy with umbrella and such, and it's not even on my radar.

[sillygoosegirl]

We have it. It costs about the same as the rest of our homeowners insurance together. We live in Oregon, so in my lifetime there's been only one small quake that didn't do much damage, but as I understand, we are expecting a big one.

We've also had some earthquake retrofitting done on our house, basically tying it to the foundation better.

[macmars45]

We're in central WA state and do not. All we get are aftershocks from the Seattle area.

[starlily]

Have lived in CA all my life and have never had it for all the reasons people have stated previously.