Shopping for homeowners insurance

[Irving]

Make sure you can get full replacement cost on your roof (Replacement Cost Value). You want to avoid Actual Cash Value (ACV) and any kind of roof payment schedule if you can. You may not be able to avoid a payment schedule with some companies, but you should be able to have RCV if the roof is new enough.

A 2% wind/hail deductible is effectively the same as having no coverage for your roof at all, in other words, be prepared to pay for an entire roof out of pocket. Similarly, with a 1% wind/hail deductible you can expect to shell out for half of your roof should you need to have it replaced for a covered loss.

Code Upgrade coverage is good to have, plus it's too cheap to not have on your policy. I liken it to having rental on your auto insurance. It's cheap, you don't ever think about it, but when you need, you really need it. It's also known as Law and Ordinance.

Good luck.

I was curious about the accuracy of my seat of the pants conjecture about deductibles, so I ran some numbers. This is a very simplified example as I simply copied the main policy limit into the spread sheet and applied a 2% and 5% deductible. Some of these estimate amounts include an additional structure, or more. So keep in mind that a 2% deductible of the dwelling value, will be less painful if you have another structure (i.e. detached garage) that is also a total loss from a catastrophic hail storm. Every estimate amount shown is a complete roof replacement; there are no partial repairs represented. All of these happen to be hail claims, and most of these are the entire roof system (shingles, drip edge, accessories) in addition to elevation damage (gutters, downspouts, windows, paint, siding, etc). Just thought I'd post some actual data to give you an idea of real life numbers, from a recent catastrophe event, in the local market.