I am in the middle of a large loss fire claim. My sentiments pretty much echo juliatallmadge's (wish I could reach her to find out how it all turned out). Mine was a high-end single family residential rental. The renter was at fault, so not only do I have the experience of dealing with my own insurance company (State Farm), I will be getting experience dealing with the renter's TWO insurance companies (one is for the general renter's policy and the other is for a general liability umbrella policy). All I can say is, it has almost been one year and the house is still standing unoccupied and untouched. The inside of the home was completely smoked out and partially structurally damaged. Only now is the claim being subrogated by my insurance company, which has paid to term limits, to the tenant's insurance company. As juliatallmadge stated, it looks like the tenant's insurance companies will try to micro-negotiate everything, so I am in the process of shopping attorneys. Since the fire was the fault of the tenant's, I deserve to be compensated for my loss. But I get the distinct feeling at this stage this will not happen without legal representation and quite possibly a legal battle that may go all the way to court. I will know more as this situation unfolds in the next 2-6 months. I can only say that State Farm has been wonderful. But be very certain to read your policy thoroughly, because even your claims adjuster can make big mistakes that you might catch. We caught a 90K mistake in our favor. Also, DO NOT make the very common mistake of being underinsured. If we had not been underinsured, we would already be started on the construction while waiting for the tenant's insurance companies to settle with us. Take pictures and videos of EVERYTHING. Open your drawers and cabinets and shoot pictures. Shoot every single feature in your house. And then store those someplace safe outside of your own home. Also, because I saw it happen, keep your computer backed up on a hard drive and store it outside of your home or in a fire/flood proof vault, as well. In my opinion, $1,200 a year for homeowner's insurance is chump change. I was paying more than that and was still underinsured.

I have great news! On November 17th, our credit card company, Citibank notified us that the dispute has been officially settled in our favor and the entire amount of our insurance premium has been permanently credited back to our account. Yippeee! For us, the hard part was following through with the documentation. I guess that our insurance company is so disorganized at this point that they could not file a case against us (plus, what they did was wrong as well). In short, thank heaven that I used a credit card to pay the premium. And speaking of credit cards, I wanted to say that several months ago I bought an item on eBay that the seller never mailed to me, nor would the seller communicate with me, even though I paid in full when the auction ended. I reported the transaction via Pay Pal (which is the only avenue eBay would let me take other than leaving negative feedback), which has a very mediocre, no, pitiful, disputes process. After a few weeks of waiting on Pay Pal to get somewhere, I finally told Pay Pal that I wanted my money back from the deadbeat seller. Here's the bad part: Pay Pal wanted to charge me $25 to pursue a claim (that's really about the amount I spent on the item), even though I'm the victim of a fraudulent seller. In fact, I believe the seller resold the item I bought in another auction. Well, if I had paid for the auction via Pay Pal's instant bank transfer method, I would have been stuck. But thanks again to my credit card (which I always use on Pay Pal, never, ever the instant bank account transfer because you don't have the same level of protection, obviously) I am disputing that charge as well. Moreover, disputing the charge via Citibank got eBays attention and they sent me a questionnaire about the transaction (what that will do, I have no idea). I'm very disappointed in eBay and in Pay Pal for the lack of support in the face of a very bad transaction, in fact, a criminal one. I am not the only one, the seller now has several negative feedback listing the same complaints as this one. In any case, thanks for helping on this homeowners insurance dispute. What a great outcome.

I just finished speaking with my State Farm agent about a property I'm considering and after doing a little research, he told me that State Farm won't insure a mobile older than 20 years unless they're already carrying the risk on a policy, i.e. if they write a policy on a 19 year old home, they'll continue covereage as long as you pay premiums. Also, the mobile has be be the policyholder's primary residence, and State Farm must also carry the policyholder's auto policy. He also said the property had to be within 10 miles of a fire station and not at significant risk of wildfires, so the area would need to be pretty much cleared of underbrush, etc.. When I asked about premiums, he gave me some numbers from an existing policy of his... 26K building, 27K contents, 100K liability for $505/yr.

Our house was almost entirely knob & tube when purchased and we had no trouble insuring. (Allstate) We've since rewired to code and insulated the attic. There was zero insulation when we purchased our home. Another insurance issue we've run into is insuring for replacement of the historic home we have as opposed to a flat rate per square foot. I find there is tremendous variation among insurance companies, and among policies, and every so often I call around to update myself and my home. You can insure beyond the "standard" to protect your not-so-standard home.