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Ready Set Sold with Bryan Vogt #40-02: Joe Harnist: Things you can do while selling to avoid possible insurance claims from the weather

March 3, 2018


Welcome back to Ready Set Sold, I’m your host Bryan Vogt and I’m so happy today to have a sweety expert Joe Harnist, President of Harnist Insurance with was 40 years plus of experience when it comes to covering homes and small business cars and a variety of other things and Joe one of the things that we kind of left off on but during the break we you talked about there’s a few things you want to add on about being prepared as far as the house and what coverages you may mean that we need to have yeah Brian um I just want to kind of follow up on the sump pump issue of the basements and the water in the basements just one thing I wanted to point out and it’s an issue that unfortunately there is no coverage for and with all the rain that we’ve had everything else and we’ve had this it doesn’t happen often but there’s a thing called hydrostatic pressure and basically that’s the pressure of the water in the ground around your house.
And when we have real heavy rains like this that pressure increases and that actually can force the water through the cracks of the walls or through the joints where the floor of the basement meets the foundation wall and enforce water through there that is not a covered peril under homeowners policy and I just want to point that out as a difference between that and water backup or sump pump failure so just to be clear on things the other thing too is as far as preparedness you know we’re getting into the spring and people get to start and start getting out there their furniture for their deck and their patio and maybe they’ve got a trampoline in the backyard which yeah the coverage there is kind of questionable on certain things but big thing is the winds make sure that stuff is tied down.
Or if you know a storms come and put it in the garage you know get anything that’s lightweight that can fly through the air try to tie it down or remediate that issue you know if you’ve got a neighbor next door that has a trampoline maybe have a general conversation with them say do you have that tied down you know is it anchored to the ground or is it just sitting there you know because we’ve had issues where you know we’ve had a trampoline fly from three doors down and smashed through a whole wall of windows on somebody else’s house because they when you get a whim they fly it pretty easy but it’s just thinking about those things and trying to remediate them is what we try to talk to people about and I think again you know we talk about selling your house and you just don’t know some things that happen and a situation like that that we described if you’re selling your house.
That is exactly the last possible thing you could possibly want I mean having your glasses broken and that’s going to stop the showings traditionally that’s going to take some time to get repaired you know all these things are coming to play and just by what I’m hearing you say is doing just a little bit of prep work in advance just a little bit of information that you’re giving can make you know it’s well situations where it never happens until it does right and when it does you know it you know that’s why having information the right information you’re providing us right now also employ tied into with the home sewing process is a great thing so any other thing we’re asking about Hale or during the break yeah just the Hale situation on roofs you know in talking about it in real estate reference to you know you want to make sure you have your roof looked at or if you’re buying a house and normally with inspections they’re going to look
at the roof and everything.
A lot of times people you know have hail damage and they don’t realize it on their roof so you have to you know what if we have some kind of hail you know the very small pea-sized hail usually doesn’t have a act on a roof but you know anything larger could very well be damaging the roof you know can damage gutters siding windows you know a number of different things so just a just to take a look at it and make sure your roofs in good condition and then that and so on the house too you want to make sure all your utility areas are up to date your HVAC your electric your plumbing you know make sure those things are all you know updated because the companies the insurance companies that are the questions we have to ask is how old is your plumbing how old are your furnace and air conditioner you know when was the last time you had a new roof put on so those things could affect you being able to get insurance on that house.
Depending on how old those things are you know when you buy it gotcha catchy so just having some general ideas it’s basically what you’re really saying is a call to your insurance agent is not a bad thing when you’re getting ready to pay anytime number one is anytime during this time of year but especially if you’re selling your house is that hopefully you have someone like yourself show that that it has the knowledge it has the information that when those questions occur can get answered and information is really the key of having success in anything so a little bit of planning goes a long way not only in staging your house but in just knowing situations that aren’t likely to happen but boy it’s great to know that if you did one little thing that maybe that would change the course.
In case something did happen and that’s important I’m speaking with Joe Harnist president of Harnist insurance company 40 years plus of experience and Joe other things that may pop up because you know you mentioned about the roof and you talk about healing as a hail I think to kind of maybe carry on with that a little bit more we have had situations where damage was done but no leakage and I think that’s where showers run into problems with since nothing happened they didn’t see any water drain didn’t see anything happening that they think that the roof is fine that’s not true correct right yeah you can you can have hail damage to shingles and not have any leaks in the roof that’s for sure you know there’s a definite science to it I mean we’ve actually had companies send out engineers to look at roofs to determine whether there actually was hail damage or not you know depending on the size of the roof and the age of the roof and everything else you know it’s where the adjuster may not quite be able to determine if it is actually you know hail damage so there are actually engineers out there that they can do that.
It doesn’t happen that often most of the time it’s pretty you know cut and dry but you got to look to they look for you know the age of the damage you know is a visit from this most recent storm or is it is it older damaged you know that’s why you should always I know you don’t always get up and look at your roof you don’t climb up there or anything else but it wouldn’t hurt maybe every two to three years to call a roofing company and say you know can you come out and take a look at my roof you know and they may charge you a fee to do that but I think in the long run you’re gonna be better off because you want to know whether you have damage or not basically you know I want some prevention is what we’re talking about if there’s even the doubt about it you know to call your insurance call someone like Joe a Harnist who has the experience if you had said a home inspection and it the roof passed but a week later god forbid hail came in insurance may be coming in down the road. And they’re going to be spotting that that could be a real issue and that’s really important for people to understand.
Okay we’re running out of time in this segment but you’re gonna agreed to stay on for a little bit longer so we’ll be back with Joe Harnist President of Harnist Insurance again 40 years of experience that’s something that you want to be looking for when looking for insurance agent experience will talk to.

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