Home insurance for rural dwellers

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Hi, all. I am moving out of a big city this weekend and boy am I paying a higher price for insurance on my home in the country (though I'm sure it'll be worth it). My question is this: Does anyone know of any insurance or insurance-like organization which specializes in rural home insurance which could be less expensive than your run of the mill insurance companies? Something like a coop. Thanks, all!

-- Brian McCabe (scout@integrityonline26.com), October 07, 1999

Answers

This is coming late for you but may help others. One of the reasons rural ins. is so high is the fire dept. Most rural areas have volunteer depts. Most of those depts. are rated a 9 or 10 as opposed to city paid depts that should be 1-5. Since volunteers can't be counted on to show up since they may be out of town or working in the city or whatever the response rate will not be as good. Also, they don't sleep at the station waiting to hear an alarm, they go about their business until a call comes in. Then they have to get to the station and get the truck out. If a fire happens at night they have to wake up, get dressed and possibly drive away from the fire to get the truck. My dh is VFD so I'm certainly not putting them down, just stating the facts of life.

To lower ins. you want to find the best rated dept you can and live close to the station. We live 5 miles away and our rates were at the upper end. I never could find anyplace that had lower rates for rural houses. A tradeoff is our car insurance went down since we weren't in a high theft/damage area. Just because I couldn't find it doesn't mean it isn't there though. Keep looking.

It's sad to say but our firefighters know they are more there to keep the fire from spreading than they are to save the structure. One of my friends lost 3/4 of her house and she only lives about 3 miles from the station.

Good luck in your new house. You must be very excited.

Sharon

-- Sharon in NM (Kaori11801@aol.com), October 07, 1999.


We have homeowners insurance with a company called Farmers Union. It is geared toward rural property. Might want to check it out.

-- Marci (ajourend@libby.org), October 07, 1999.

Consult with local finance companies and/or mortgage lenders in the area you are moving to. They will be able to steer you to the right insurance for your needs, since they are familiar with the area. Properties that they have mortgages out on must be properly insured, so they will not suffer losses if these properties are damaged or destroyed. Dan.

-- Dan (dshaske@excel.net), October 08, 1999.

We live 2 miles from our VFD but at this time they have only 4 people, they just about had to close the whole place, the next fire department is 12 miles away, if our insurance company knew about that they would probably cancel us. On the other hand for 15 years in up state NY I could not even get fire insurance or liability so I flew without a net. As it is here, in the forest fire area of Oregon, we have ABC fire extinguishers everywhere and all summer we live with the fear of a major fire. We are insured by Allstate, different states have different applications.

-- Bob Henderson (redgate@echoweb.net), October 10, 1999.

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