Welcome to City-Data.com Forum!
U.S. CitiesCity-Data Forum Index
Go Back   City-Data Forum > U.S. Forums > Florida > Ocala
 [Register]
Ocala Marion County
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
View detailed profile (Advanced) or search
site with Google Custom Search

Search Forums  (Advanced)
 
Old 07-02-2018, 11:09 AM
 
149 posts, read 179,901 times
Reputation: 105

Advertisements

I thought I would start a new thread on the sinkhole insurance coverage topic to share my experience, because the existing forum stuff is pretty old from what I can tell, and it appears to be a popular topic.

I recently bought a new construction home in Stone Creek. When I went to get homeowners insurance for it, and most notably sinkhole coverage, I got a few surprises.

First, I had to fire USAA as my insurance company because they wouldn't write a homeowners policy for me at all because of Florida sinkholes. But the sleaze-bags of course wanted me to keep my auto policy with them. We closed everything with USAA, even the savings account, because of their behavior. We've had a lot of unsavory issues with USAA and this one broke the camel's back.

Next we got a surprise with the builder, a national, stock market traded company, that has an insurance subsidiary. They offered us homeowners insurance, but we found out they don't right sinkhole coverage either. So that was amusing, but still not a viable option.

It's important to note that catastrophic sinkhole coverage is supposedly a mandatory part of Florida homeowners policies to my knowledge, but it only covers the total loss of your home. The home has to become uninhabitable. From all appearances on this coverage, if the earth in front of your home disappears and doesn't make the house uninhabitable, then it's your problem with these policies. And it tends to have very high deductibles. We wanted a policy that covers any damage from sinkholes, with a reasonable deductible.

We ended up getting coverage from an Allstate subsidiary company called Castle Key. Apparently Allstate renamed their former Allstate Floridian company to Castle Key. At first I thought the agent was farming me out to some little third party, so I was relieved to see it was still an Allstate company.

A twist in the Castle Key sinkhole rider, which supposedly has a $1,000 deductible, is it can't be turned on immediately. It begins after the regular homeowners policy starts. So to my understanding, on day one of taking possession of the house, we won't have this coverage yet. And it also won't be part of our mortgage escrow account because of this. Which kind of sucks.

With the sinkhole rider, the Castle Key policy is supposed to cost between $800-$900 annually. If that changes, then I'll come back and update the costs.

So that's been our experience with sinkhole coverage.

By all means please share your experience about which companies are providing it to help those seeking the information.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message

 
Old 07-02-2018, 08:01 PM
 
Location: Florida
6,593 posts, read 7,245,065 times
Reputation: 8102
I think the costs varies by distance from sink holes and in stone creek I have seen a sink hold in a front yard and also a damaged road. My theory is that if you are closer to a pond you have a bigger risk of a sink hole. Reason is a leak in the liner can erode the ponds foundation and also the great weight of the water pushing down on the earth can cause a sink hole as the water table goes up and down.

Did you also get hurricane insurance? The deductible is probably a lot more than the 1,000 sinkhole deductible.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 07-02-2018, 08:21 PM
 
149 posts, read 179,901 times
Reputation: 105
Quote:
Originally Posted by rjm1cc View Post
I think the costs varies by distance from sink holes and in stone creek I have seen a sink hold in a front yard and also a damaged road. My theory is that if you are closer to a pond you have a bigger risk of a sink hole. Reason is a leak in the liner can erode the ponds foundation and also the great weight of the water pushing down on the earth can cause a sink hole as the water table goes up and down.

Did you also get hurricane insurance? The deductible is probably a lot more than the 1,000 sinkhole deductible.
I need to dig into the hurricane insurance question. The policy mentions a deductible for it, but nothing that makes me sure we have it as coverage beyond a basic homeowners policy.


I intentionally chose a lot a good distance away from any of the water features for the reasons you describe.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 07-03-2018, 01:08 PM
 
5,687 posts, read 7,115,802 times
Reputation: 4326
Quote:
Originally Posted by Raisinet View Post
I need to dig into the hurricane insurance question. The policy mentions a deductible for it, but nothing that makes me sure we have it as coverage beyond a basic homeowners policy.


I intentionally chose a lot a good distance away from any of the water features for the reasons you describe.
Very wise. I once tried to educate some people on why a certain part of a county south of here was dotted with all these lovely ponds and small lakes. Many, if not most, are old sinkholes that filled up with water over time. Well, they developed that area massively and some of the people who bought are in denial. So they got angry at me. Go figure.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.

Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.


Reply
Please update this thread with any new information or opinions. This open thread is still read by thousands of people, so we encourage all additional points of view.

Quick Reply
Message:


Settings
X
Data:
Loading data...
Based on 2000-2020 data
Loading data...

123
Hide US histogram


Over $104,000 in prizes was already given out to active posters on our forum and additional giveaways are planned!

Go Back   City-Data Forum > U.S. Forums > Florida > Ocala
Similar Threads

All times are GMT -6.

© 2005-2024, Advameg, Inc. · Please obey Forum Rules · Terms of Use and Privacy Policy · Bug Bounty

City-Data.com - Contact Us - Archive 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37 - Top