Having first seen the site today, I hadn't noticed. Looking again, there are links (and photos) regarding pot that leads to another site.
But I'm not sure how the above is particularly relevant to the topic.
Stupidity.
That's not true because it depends entirely on the practices and requirements of the lender, which vary. The several mortgage companies I've been involved with required fire insurance to be maintained, but it was paid by me. Presumably, they would get the notification from the insurance company if the coverage lapsed, but no guarantee. Also, they paid the real estate taxes from day one and continued to pay them regardless of equity. Which never made a lot of sense to me. If I were the lender, I'd be more concerned about the fire insurance than the taxes. If the coverage lapses, they don't get notified for some reason, the house could be gone in a sudden fire. Losing the house by not paying taxes is a long process with a lot of notification along the way.
Maybe not stupid, but unquestionably risky without fire insurance, as this case demonstrates. One can choose to do whatever they want, but going without fire insurance puts the entire risk of loss on you. No question it is risky compared to having insurance.
How long will it take this off grid person to put away the resources to rebuild? In the case of my house, it would take about 300 years of homeowner's insurance payments to equal the cost to rebuild my house. Some things the typical person can self insure to some extent. Example would be having a high deductible on a homeowners or car insurance plan. But self insuring against fire is impossible for
99% of people. And somehow I think the guy here is in that 99%.
That's exactly what I was thinking as well. I would actually expect to find that homes without insurance are more likely to have fires or other accidents because a lot more of them are occupied by people with low or no income and are consequently subjected to all kinds of increased risk. An example would be just like they can't pay the insurance bill, they also can't pay the heating bill and rely instead on a some old, unsafe space heater. Or they have all kinds of wiring hazards that most insured people would pay to have fixed in the normal course of events.
I must be traveling in the wrong circles. I've known wealthy people and I have yet to know one that I could say they don't have fire insurance. Actually, it's more surprising that you know lots of wealthy people's financial details to the extent that you know whether they are insured or not. And it's not just about losing a house. Typical homeowner's insurance includes not only fire, but you are protected against someone being injured on your property and winding up with a huge lawsuit that could far exceed the value of the house.
Home heating is #2. Of the home heating fires, only 1/3 are space heaters. I would have thought that to be much higher, because those fires are often publicized. Water heaters appear to be a major hazard,
Wiring is a tiny fraction.
I could find no breakdown of fire losses by the uninsured.
It looks like carelessness is number 1.
Jeff
Yes, it depends on the lender, but also state law. In Illinois the borrower can remove escrow when principal is paid down to 65% of original loan. Illinois Escrow Account Act. In my case I removed all escrow at 20% equity. Including HO insurance. I was getting the PMI (private mortgage insurance) canceled per The Homeowners Protection Act of 1998 and the lender allowed removal of all escrow. It cost me a couple hundred for an appraisal to remove the PMI. Think it was costing $80 a month. Some people pay that needlessly and get ripped for years and years. Same with escrow if you can remove it. You get the interest instead of the lender or escrow service. Interest is almost nothing now, but was something when it mattered to me.
Yes, the insurance company notifies the lender. When my mortgage was sold to BOA notification wasn't sent to my insurer, so the insurer sent renewal confirmation to the previous lender. That's why BOA tried to charge me an exorbitant amount for insurance I already had at half the cost. BOA screwed up the paperwork, or IT processing. State Farm said they should have been notified by BOA when they bought the loan.
When I had escrow with the first lender, Washington Mutual, they failed to pay my real estate taxes once. Washington Mutual screwed up the paperwork, or IT processing. I suppose the lenders are also notified that taxes are paid. But I was notified by my county by another bill with a stiff late penalty. The lender handled it after I called them.
Anyway, you're right that lenders vary, and so do state laws. My point was there are holes in the processes and it is possible to have a mortgage and no homeowners insurance if a hole is hit. But none of this applies to the subject of "House Fire."
--Vic
Only? If 1/3 are caused by space heaters, then as expected space heaters are way more dangerous because there are an order of magnitude or more homes with fixed heating systems as opposed to space heaters.
You can have liability insurance without dwelling or contents insurance. You can have personal liability insurance that covers you against any liability claim against you for non-business occurrences, or for both. And you can have E&O to cover you against proffessional oversight.
Santa Monica CA, little Clover Field airport has been there since the glory days of WW II production. It was always used just by small props. When jets came in, only smaller ones were allowed. Somehow this morphed into giant luxury jets used by the Very Rich. Such as our outgoing (thank goodness!) Governator Schwarzenegger. When he flies into the LA area, he's too good to use LAX like the rest of us peasants.
Then they can do what they should have done long ago. Level the houses and turn it into open space. If the airport was there before the houses, they HAVE to live with it.
Was it fireplace ashes, or a dead "roach"?
Insurance to replace the house, and liability insurance to protect your assets, are two entirely different things. You may purchase them together and you may think they are a package deal, but in fact they are separate insurance products. As I said, I know people who self-insure the things they own; however, all of them buy commercial liability insurance.
Also, insurance to replace a house should be based on the cost per square foot to rebuild, not on the appraised value of the house. Those also are two different things. In my community, replacement cost is easily 50% or more above appraised value and many houses are significantly underinsured.
For a DIY house built with very low cost materials (recycled barn siding, not luxury hardwoods etc) and few mechanicals, built with sweat equity and hand tools, with no accounting for labor costs, the appraised value will be several times lower than the replacement cost, and the calculated replacement cost also won't be a fair measure because again sweat equity is not measured.
I lived in such a house that was insured and burned down. The insurance paid out to the max but that was far below enough to rebuild the house.
Una
I suppose if someone were for some reason wanting to discount the explanation for the cause of the fire, they could also wonder if stoned occupants contributed to the mishandling of the fireplace ashes.
As for myself, I feel sorry for the guy whether he or his relatives were stoned or not.
wrote
You'd think that would be the case, but nooooooooooooo, we can bitch a lot and have changes made. Many airports have been forced to put in noise abatement devices, change landing patterns late at night and even put new windows in some houses.
Same syndrome as people trapped in now-grossly-devalued houses alongside what used to be a sedate semi-rural 2-laner, but is now a 5-lane thoroughfare out to the mall and commercial strip that got built out by the Big Road. For airports, they seldom planned a big enough clear (or limited to industrial use) zone around the perimeter when they were built (or in many cases adapted from old military airfields.)
Noise abatement - to some degree. Limiting night flights, yes. Beyond that, there should be no liability to housing built after the airport was there.
Our "local" airport has become an "international" airport, with jets etc coming and going, people in the ritzy neighbourhood across the river were bitching - but they don't have a leg to stand on because the property was listed as "under flight path"
I feel sorry for the guy, however he setup and wrote about renewable energy systems, and he should have had enough knowledge and sense to make the adjustments necessary to make the place both less of a fire risk and insurable. Indeed that evaluation of the risks, the remediations to eliminate the risks and the process of dealing with insurance companies to show the risks were remediated would make a good series of articles.
Heh. Can't recall the details but in Spokane Wa some braindead bureacrat issued a building permit for what should have been a banned business in the protected zone under the airport traffic pattern. Almost a federal case to get it cancelled.
Harry K
Still curious where you are getting the information that the place was not insurable. I have seen nothign in this thread to indicate any problems with the insurable status of it.
Harry K
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