[www.msn.com]

(click on 'continue reading' near bottom)

of particular concern is:

Quote

3. Your homeowners insurance may not cover a claim for damage

I highly suggest all the DIYs out there read and consider this article.

==============================================

"Measure Twice & Cut Once" - Retired U.A. Local 1 & 638



Edited 1 times.

Yes, if the deed says 3 bedroom and 2 bath, but the actual house is 6 bedroom and 4 bath someone will get suspicious that work was done without permits. In fact, our town on LI had a reputation for going through real estate listings and comparing the description of the house to what they had on file, and then sending an inspector to the open house...but in this case it wasn't about the "safety" of the renovations, it was about unpaid tax $$$.

I think of it this way...if you hire a licensed/bonded/insured plumber (or any contractor for that matter) then they are responsible for both the quality and correctness of the work performed. If something goes wrong they pay to correct it. When you DIY, YOU own that responsibility. If I understand what needs to be done, the "why" of the code requirements, and know that I have the tools and skills to get it done, I will DIY. If I'm not comfortable that I know everything about the job, I hire a pro.
We put a pool in last year...I pulled the required permits (3 in total) and had the required inspections (8 in total) done. The last visit was from the tax assessor but that's part of the game.

I live in a house that's over 70 years old. The prior owners hired a variety of licensed tradesmen over the years who performed permitted work on the house (the house has permit stickers all over the place). Some of the work did not meet the requirements of the NEC nor of the NSPC at the time it was performed. Did the inspector miss the issues? Did the inspector grant an exception? Were noncompliant repairs made at a later date by a third party? Your building department may have limited records from forty years ago, and many of the people involved in the prior work are probably deceased or retired, so clear attribution of work to any individual can be very difficult.

Sometimes the age of the products in question tells a pretty clear story. For example, in my house the gasket connecting a vertical PVC soil stack with a cast iron vent tee on a building drain bears a Multi-Tite registered trademark (Fernco later went on to use of the name but without any trademark protection), which indicates the gasket was installed during the full attic conversion during the 1980s. The vent tee is from the 1950s and matches the other 1950s cast iron upstream. Clearly the improper fittings were installed under the 1980s building permit.

Whatever story the house tells, you are unlikely to have a homeowners claim denied due simply to the presence of unpermitted work in your house. If your obviously unpermitted work clearly caused a loss, you may be dropped as a customer after your claim is paid.



Edited 3 times.

3. Your homeowners insurance may not cover a claim for damage

In the course of renovating your home, things have the potential to go wrong -- whether you're doing the work yourself or have hired a contractor. In many cases, homeowners insurance will pay for damage incurred during a renovation gone awry.

But if you don't obtain the proper permits, your insurer might refuse to pick up the tab.

Similarly, let's say your renovation goes off without a hitch, only some of the work is done incorrectly, resulting in damage to your home down the line. If that project in question doesn't have a permit attached to it, your home insurance company may not pay out.

==============================================

"Measure Twice & Cut Once" - Retired U.A. Local 1 & 638

I don't know hoe "regional" insurance claims are as far as how they are processed, but in my experience (I currently have 24 active home insurance related policies), while insurance *MAY* deny a claim based on work not permitted, they typically do not because they don't work that way.

There are many reasons to obtain a permit when doing renovations, peace of mind, having all the Is dotted and the Ts crossed makes a future resale go smoother etc etc etc.

But as far as insurance companies have a very different claim process.

Down here in south Florida, if you carry a mortgage, you are required to purchase homeowner insurance, and many people are also required to carry windstorm insurance, and if you are in a specific flood zone, you are also required to carry flood insurance, and starting in 2027, everyone whether in flood zone or not needs to have flood insurance as a prerequisite to windstorm coverage. So for most people you are buying three policies, and it's not uncommon for your insurance payment to exceed your mortgage payment on a monthly basis.

Now, for homeowner insurance you are dealing with theft, vandalism, fire, water damages etc...Now thirty years ago, insurance companies cares about permits. You house on fire and you filed a claim, they send someone to investigate. If it an electric fire? What caused it, is it substandard electrical work, unpermitted perhaps? Problem is they can't verify anything. Let's say they traced the cause of fire to a melted receptacle and the wiring was 16AWG on a 20A breaker. What permit? When was it done? By whom? You may have permitted a kitchen renovation in 2002, then added two lights in 2004 unpermitted, then added a trash compactor in 2007 unpermitted, needed to add a disposer and raised the sanitary tee connection behind the wall in 2008 unpermitted, no one could tell how much work was piled on after the original renovation permit. The claim adjuster can't say it's unpermitted simply because the work is not to code because no one knows under what code cycle a specific piece of work was installed for all trades involved. If it's a windstorm claim where your window's broken roof blown off and the entire house flooded, no one cares if your water heater was replaced with a permit or not.

Also bear in mind, at least in south Florida, you cannot just buy insurance by filling out paper work. To buy homeowners insurance, you must first hire a qualified inspector to perform a FOUR POINT INSPECTION REPORT of your home covering the four points - structure, HVAC, plumbing, electrical. They come to your home and do an inspection and fill out all the details. If you want windstorm insurance you do a WIND MITIGATION INSPECTION REPORT and a ROOF INSPECTION REPORT. You want flood coverage, you need a recent survey plus an ELEVATION CERTIFICATE. So you pay over $1000 out of pocket just on inspections to ask for insurance quotes. Once they accepted what's in the reports, you are insured based on that understanding of "initial conditions", permitted or not. These reports are used to determine your risks. So if you have a house with 30 windows and all of them impact windows your rates will be lower then if they are not impacted. They do not care if these impact windows were installed by code or permitted or not. Once they accepted you, then you are covered, they cannot later on come back and say hey these windows were not installed by licensed contractors and you didn't permit any of it.

Another example, for the windstorm mitigation report, the inspector must see the roof construction method, thickness of roof deck (is it 5/8" or thicker), spacing of roofing nails, size and length of nails, roof/wall connections - are there hurricane straps, single or double, how many wraps, is it on every rafter tail, how many nails etc...now I have a property where I had the 1997 building plans, it was all permitted, and it showed in the plans the details of the roof/wall connections with everything spelled out, and inspector signatures on the permit cards. I submitted to the insurance company and say, these are the plans, and it passed inspection, so the city basically saying it complies with FBC, so these are the numbers you are looking for. Insurance agent called back, said no no no, they don't care what's on the plans, permits and code book, they need me to open up the ceiling so the inspector can determine all that visually in person. If ceiling is not opened, the inspector will note "NOT INSPECTED" on the report and my rate will be much higher due to them assuming the worst.

Nowadays, insurance companies do something even more restricted. I only started to see them do it since 2018. Once the policy is "tentatively" approved, they send their own inspector (after you already paid to have all the other inspection reports done when you applied). That inspector comes inside and shoot a video of everything. Floors, walls, furniture, under the sink, electrical panel, all appliances, fixtures, everything. That inspector says to me, this is the "BEGINNING" video. The insurance carrier will use this as a baseline. Now you see these two steel braided hoses that runs from the valve to your washing machine? Yes? OK let's say 2 years from now you changed them and it's green and red vinyl hoses. Then 3 years from now you had a water damage from a ruptured washing machine hose. You file for a claim. They come out and look, and they compare to the initial video, you have red/green hoses, but they were steel braided before, so someone along the way changed things, who did, was that person a licensed plumber? You bought a new washing machine from the big box store and they have a truck driver deliver it and they changed the hoses, obviously that person is not qualified and may be the cause of this rupture...they may deny the claim because there is a difference from the original video.

Bottom line is insurance companies want to deny your claim by any means possible, but they do a lot more to capture everything in the house at the start of the coverage, the inspector told me every time I changed anything he shot in that video, I better document the who, why, what and how.



Edited 1 times.

Sum,

Wow, things in Florida are even worse than here in California! We've been cancelled three times in 5 years, this time we may have to resort to the state-sponsored FAIR plan which is expensive for poor coverage. All the insurers for the last few years have sent out a "photographer" to get those starting point videos/photos you mentioned.

In any case, it is also true here that if an insurance company can find a reason to avoid paying, they will. All our recent policies contain language requiring us to hire licenced professionals to do repairs and pull permits.