An insurance company cancelling a homeowner’s policy can be quite disconcerting, especially when it’s for foundation structural issues. A1 Foundation Crack Repair has dealt with this issue a number of times. Tony how A1 has helped customers get this situation resolved.
Narrator: It’s time once again for the “Crack Man Podcast” hosted by A1 Foundation Crack Repair. I’m Darren Kincaid here with the Crack Daddy himself, Adam Tracy. Adam and The Crack Man Rich have over 30 years’ experience in the construction industry. Rich as over 25 years as the president and founder of A1 Foundation Crack Repair. This podcast provides expert basement waterproofing, concrete repair, and preventative maintenance tips for homeowners and businesses. A1 Foundation’s valuable insight will help avert a disastrous flood within the basement, health problems associated with water infiltration, and protect your biggest investment….your home. My insurance company is canceling my policy for foundation cracks. What can I do?
Narrator: So, Adam, an insurance company canceling a homeowner's policy can be quite disconcerting, especially when it's for foundation structural issues. You've dealt with this issue a number of times, right?
Adam: We have dealt with this issue a number of times and in fact, we have a couple of active jobs right now. You know, not to joke about the canceled culture of society now, but in the home ownership side where you have a home insurance policy, they come out and do audits on your property from time to time. Usually, they walk around and look at different things to make sure that everything that they're insuring is still what they expect to be insured. And usually, a handful times a year, maybe more, we get some insurance claim issues where a homeowner, whether they're buying a new house, or upgrading, updating a policy, or changing policies, is flagged for a number of issues. One of the issues would be foundation issues.
The most concerning time where it's a hardship is when there's a current policy in place and that they have to be rectified within a certain period of time. So, we have a job currently going on in Worcester, Massachusetts right now where they took home ownership a couple months ago, started kind of figuring things out, wanted to change their policy now that they owned the house a little bit. This triggered an audit of their property. The assessor came out and looked at the property and found the stone foundation, found a couple areas of the foundation had some visible cracking on the exterior. That triggered a structural concern of the underwriter which then said, ok, you have 30 days to rectify this problem, or else we’re canceling your insurance.
This happened to be a rental property, and in Massachusetts, you can't have rental properties without insurance. So, this was even a higher priority because they were very concerned about the fact that they had tenants already in place. They're potentially going to be uninsured property within 30 days unless this problem is resolved. Now, I'll say a lot of the times when we get these inquiries coming in through a homeowner or even potentially through an insurance agent, it's usually pretty straightforward repair. A lot of the people out there looking at the properties aren't always the master practitioners of foundations, they have to kind of be generally knowledgeable about all things homes. So they see an issue and they are on the side of caution to basically flag it and tell you, hey, deal with this problem or else we're canceling you.
Most of them are usually pretty straightforward repairs. Sometimes they hit the nail on the head though, and there are major structural concerns with the house that are flagged by these visits of the assessors. So, if you are getting in a situation where you're changing your insurance, or upgrading your insurance, or they just do a random inspection of the property and they do flag these issues, you can't sit on it because they do give you a very tight timeline to actually get these repairs done. And while some of these repairs are very straightforward and can be done relatively quickly, some cannot. And a lot of these times, you actually have to show that it's been repaired, paid for and completed within that 30 day period, and then very rarely do they offer exceptions and extensions to that rule.
Luckily, this house in Worcester, we’re able to repair it in a couple of days, it was not a huge structural issue, it was a minor structural issue that we were able to rectify, satisfy the insurance company, and they can maintain ownership of the policy as well as having all their tenants in there as well. So just an important thing to know, that even though you may not be getting water in the foundation and somebody may have told you that something is fine on the outside of the house that looks benign in the eyes of your insurance company, it may not be. So it's important to make sure that these issues are dealt with ahead of time or dealt with very quickly if they do come up with an inspection.
Narrator: Thanks Adam, for explaining how A1 has helped homeowners whose home policy got canceled for foundation cracks.
Narrator: If you have a basement water problem and think you need a professional, or, if you’d like more information on foundation crack repair and basement waterproofing topics, please visit A1FoundationCrackRepair.com or call Rich at (866) 929-3171. Or you can email Rich at info@a1foundationcrackrepair.com. Thanks for listening and keep that basement dry.