Ready Set Sold with Bryan Vogt #35-02: Joe Harnist: Importance of meeting with an insurance as soon as you have an accepted contract

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Welcome back to Ready Set Sold and I’m happy to let you know that your harness is not only a sponsor but he’s a local expert specially in the Metro East Oh found Shiloh Belle well ed Raziel Columbia I mean there’s the guy kind of does it all and Jo I know you’re still there right yeah sure I’m Brad yo what I wanted to really talk about this segment I know you wanted to really bring it up and that was especially for buyers and this is also important for sellers too because again 90-95 % of sellers become buyers and that is that too often not always but too often buyers think that in 1 or 24 hours or less they’re going to instantly have a policy the day before closing and that’s decked a very difficult task to handle it.
Yeah Brian it is because there’s so much it goes into to writing you know a homeowner’s policy I mean yeah you can take a policy and slap it on the wall and be done with it quickly but if you really want to do the job right you have to have some lead time I mean realistically as soon as soon as somebody knows that they’re buying a home and they’ve got a closing date set they need to contact their insurance I mean we’ve had situations in the past where people call us as a oh I forgot you know it’s I’m closing tomorrow or I’m closing in two days and I’m going really you know it because it takes time to put things together and you don’t want to you don’t want to shortchange that person in the coverages that they need so you’ve got to have time to basically interview them and sit down with them.
You’ve got to calculate out the reconstruction cost of the house there may be issues with the house that may be an underwriting problem that you may not necessarily be able to get that insurance that you want on that house you know the way the bank wants it either you know if it’s in a floodplain that really creates a problem because hmm’ floods a totally separate policy than a homeowner’s policy so there’s a lot that goes into it that people don’t necessarily always realize.
And then the other thing too is that if you’re right in the home you know to get the best price on the home we always like to look at the auto because you’re getting a multi-policy discount if we can right the auto and that multi-policy discount on the homeowners side can be very significant I mean we’re talking 25 to 30 percent difference in premium so it’s huge so yeah so I mean just so you know.
And for those that maybe haven’t purchased a home for a period of time in particular in the
O’Fallon Shiloh Force Base in this area once you have offered acceptance is actually in the contract that you’ve been that’s been accepted but you have 10 days you have 10 days to show proof of it that you have the ability to get insurance but within that 10 days it’s just as easy to go ahead and have the policy right I mean that’s what you really saying goes have one less thing you have to worry about when you come into closing because we’ve had that happen like you said panic City if someone forgot it’s supposed to do it and what I’m hearing you say is you can slap something on at least to get you started but even if you do that that’s okay but you need to come back then to your agent that you’re not really done and then maybe go through the fine points to get things straight now is that something that people can do.
They can but personally we don’t like to do it that way we would rather you know have it all black and white going in so they because the problem is that you know especially if your escrowing your premium and you just buy that basic thing to get by the bank to satisfy the bank and then you come back to us and say well I want to add this I’m going to add this on it well that’s going to change your premium and then that’s going to turn around at renewal and you’re not going to have enough money in your escrow account to pay your renewal premium because you’ve increased your premium from what it was a reduction.
So yeah so I can make it that’s a great point that really is a great point so again it’s it you know look we talked about in the first segment but I think it bears repeating this is your biggest asset that you’ll ever own and just taking out some time and sitting down with someone like Joe or someone that you know that you trust local and our opinion seems to work really well so a local in transition is just has that local knowledge of the area knows maybe a little bit more than actually a lot more than is someone online doesn’t mean you can’t get it from online vendor.
But we just seen a lot of people have a lot great success with having a local realtor that knows the area knows the market knows what to look for and I think that’s really important because in a sense even though is there may be some upfront things you have to do it’s still basically easy right I mean people can do this they do it every day right yeah I mean we can we can run through things I mean it’s just a matter of gathering the information and figuring it up and then getting back with the client and saying here’s all our options and we do that every day I actually just talked to a client this morning that we’re doing some numbers for and I kind of went over it all with them with her on the phone and now I’m going to email all the proposals to herand I said I’ll follow up with it in a day or two and see if you have any questions and decide on what coverages you want you know.
But what I’m sending her is everything that I would recommend and I think they would need and making other suggestions and then let them pick and choose what they feel is most important you know and I think that you saw something in the story it came to mind when you said that what I loved what you heard is you expecting your insurance agent to follow up with you to answer any questions and to go over any materials and that’s so important because just recently another situation where a buyer was buying a home and this happened to be two local agents and they both you know within 30 minutes or I don’t know.
It seemed like in a very short period of time they email the proposals and they said here it is and the pyre had no idea there was different coverages that couldn’t understand the pricing it didn’t know what to do what so the fact of making sure that you have an agent that’s going to stand behind you and answer those questions is something that you really should be no upfront when you’re talking with your agents.
That’s just a slam-dunk situation mine right exactly I’m the type of person I don’t like to rush through things because when you rush through them that’s when you make mistakes I would rather take the time and detail it cross the t’s dot the i’s and make sure we’ve got all the bases covered and that’s the way I’ve always worked in the business so well I served you well I mean for four years in the business that it served you well so again I think it’s something that people need to be aware of again I said before buddy it bears repeating this is your biggest asset and as we’ve heard today.
This is not something that you want to take lightly it’s what knowing Joe for such a long time we’ve had conversations but it’s one of the situations where we don’t wish anything bad to happen but you want to make sure that if something bad happens that you pick the wrong policy you pick the right agent to make sure that you’re covered right yeah because I mean you know when you look at the amount of coverage in there I’m like the one I was talking about that.
I’m working on this morning I mean we’ve got a $260,000 how and we’ve got a hundred and eighty two thousand dollars in personal property and we’ve got loss of use if you have to move out of your house because it’s damaged and you can’t live there so they have to pay additional living expense when you’re looking you know between a thousand and two thousand year in premium you’re covering six seven eight hundred thousand dollars worth of possible loss you know.
If you had a total loss if you look at Moore Oklahoma or places that have those tornadoes and you know the house is gone all that’s left is the slab I mean that’s that’s a lot of money that’s a lot of nerve you know you need that insurance to back you up because how else are you going to recover from that kind of loss you know and I hear you well Joe we’re out of time thank you so much for your expertise and Joe can give the listeners your email address again how they can contact you it’s the letter J as in Joe harnessed har n is an ANSI IFT at harnessed insurance.com insurance is spelled out and the phone number here is very easy at six one eight two three three five five five five awesome great job Joe if you have any questions you get the information contact him and he can help you with whatever your needs are we gotta run we really were oppressing the time.
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