We had State Farm for ~6 years and never had any problems with them...in fact, they were outstanding. We had claims for hail damage, water loss (in the basement), a car accident, and a stolen car. It was a bad few years. In each case I can tell you they went way above and beyond my expectations. However the rates climbed way too high and we switched to American Family, which cut our premiums almost in half.

My jewelry is on my Homeowners Policy and I pay about $15.00 per thousand dollars of coverage. That might be a little higher than other policies but it also has a built in 5 % inflation rate annually. That way I have increased coverage and I don't have to have them reappraised unless I want to. My jeweler is G.I.A. certified so we submitted his appraisals to the insurance company. I was in a jewelry store recently and saw the sales person give the customer a brochure describing the insurance they sell. It only covers jewelry so it's seperate from homeowner's. My daughter was given a vintage fur and she insured it with the company that stores it in the summer. So perhaps you could call a local jeweler too ask if they sell insurance. Lindsay's point about the jewelry insurance costing more than the house insurance can easily happen. If you take out a rider for a piece of jewelry you normally receive full coverage, there isn't a deductible. However some insurance companies will allow a deductible if you request it and that will lower the annual cost.

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.

Well, this has definitely been a learning experience for us! We've not been happy with the level of responsiveness from our insurance company although it supposedly is ranked as one of the top companies in the country. In many ways they have screwed up from the get go. So, we've been feeling that we are definitely on our own on this one. After more than a month of hassling this, we are starting to think that perhaps we should have just hired a GC. But, at the start we didn't realize that the scope of the necessary repairs would keep expanding into the realm where a GC might be necessary. Our adjuster just told us to find some companies to bid on the heating and plumbing work (all that we initially thought was involved). As we get further into this, we are realizing all of the additional things that will need to be worked on. I guess we are lucky in that we have the funds in hand to pay for some of the initial expenses such as temporary lodging and initial diagnostic work on the house. A number of times we've talked about how in the world people who don't have the extra money would be able to handle making these payments and then waiting for reimbursement. Our insurance company didn't even step up and offer any assistance with finding temporary lodging until more than two weeks into this. And, then, they didn't have any better options than I'd managed to find after hours and hours of searching on my own. I think some of the issues we are having are due to our wanting to do things our own way to make sure they are done correctly and in a manner suitable to a 100 year old house. The insurance company has four approved contractors in our city, and if we had chosen to work through them all of the money would have gone directly to them through the insurance agency without us having to be involved at all. But, we started looking into reviews of those companies, and they weren't great. So, we opted out of using those approved contractors. We are ending up acting as our own GC, but it is a lot of work! We are lucky we have the time to do this. Yes, we have just considered paying off the rest of the mortgage and could do that. But, we live in a pretty pricey house and that is a good chunk of money that we might want to have available elsewhere in this entire process. So, we are sitting on that idea for a bit. And, when asking about pocketing some of the money by doing work on my own, my intent is not to defraud or raise rates. I just want to know why I could not do the painting myself since I am as capable as the professional that I know the insurance company will be paying a pretty penny to do the same work. So, are some of you suggesting that we just hire a GC, have the GC make a bid for the entire project, and then make our own arrangements with the GC on how we could save some of the total sum by doing the work ourselves? Thanks for all of the advice and personal experiences.