3 Things You Should Know About Flood Insurance
When purchasing a home insurance policy, one of the types of coverage you'll need to accept or decline is flood insurance. Before you decline coverage because you feel that your home is safe, know these three things.
Water Damage Isn't Treated Equally
A common misconception with homeowner insurance is the belief that water damage is treated equally, no matter how it gets into your home. This is simply not true. The way that water gets into a home could be covered depending on if you have the proper coverage.
For example, a typical homeowners insurance policy should cover water damage caused by a roof with a leak in it. If you have water that backs up into your basement from the sewer, you would need a separate sewer backup coverage just for that situation. If water gets in through the basement window wells due to flash flooding, that would require flood insurance.
Understand your policy so that you know what kind of water damage is and isn't covered.
Flood Insurance Can Be Useful For Areas That Aren't High Risk
When shopping for homeowners insurance, your agent will look at the location of your home and determine if it is in a high-risk area for flooding with resources like the FEMA flood map. While this map will tell you if you are in a zone that is at high risk of flooding due to nearby bodies of water, it will not tell you other factors that can cause flooding.
Consider things such as where your home is located in relation to other homes. Is your house at the bottom of a dip in the block where all the rainwater flows to? During a heavy rainstorm, it's possible that water could not drain into the sewer fast enough and reach your basement's window wells. Factors like this may not put you at high risk in your insurance company's eyes, but having flood insurance could help protect you from paying to repair flood related water damage.
Flood Maps Can Change
Even if you bought your house a while ago and you were not in a high-risk area, it is worth periodically checking if the flood maps have changed for where your house is located. Your area can become a high risk for flooding over time, and while your home was once considered safe, it could now be in danger. Consider adding flood insurance to your homeowner's insurance policy if this happens. For more information, contact a company like Heritage Insurance Agency.
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