Insurance Tips Continued

Ready to Hit the Road with RV Insurance

Recreational Vehicle (RV) insurance provides a comprehensive policy to cover you from specific risks you may encounter as a recreational vehicle owner.

Whether you’re insuring a camper, motor home or other RV, choose a policy that best suited for your needs.

At Shoff Insurance of Florida, we have the right policy to meet all of your insurance needs. Recreational vehicles are usually categorized into a couple of different categories: motor homes and travel trailers.

Motorhomes are vehicles with living quarters permanently attached. To qualify for RV insurance, most providers require that the following features to be permanently attached:

• Cooking appliances
• Refrigeration
• Bathroom
• Heating and/or air conditioning
• Drinkable water supply system
• 110 – 125 volt electrical system

Travel trailers and campers have separate requirements. Travel trailers and campers are non-motorized and are typically towed by a motor vehicle. To qualify for travel trailer insurance, providers usually require the following to be permanently attached:

• Cooking facility
• Sleeping area

As with standard car insurance, RV insurance is made up of several types of coverages to help protect you in different circumstances.

Many of these coverage types are optional, allowing you to work with your insurance agent to customize your RV insurance policy to fit your needs.

RV coverage types that you can choose from typically include:

• Liability – Helps protect you against costs associated with bodily injury and property damages suffered by others in an accident determined to be your fault.
• Comprehensive – Coverage to help with costs if your RV is damaged due to most non-collision related incidents.
• Collision – When your RV is damaged in a collision, this policy will help with repairs or replacement of your RV.
• Vacation Liability – Help with costs of others’ injuries or property damage, meant to cover you only when someone is hurt or their property is damaged due to your RV being used for vacation purposes, as opposed to operation on the road.
• Roadside Assistance – Coverage to help you with repair when your RV is suffering mechanical issues.

Recreational vehicles are often very expensive and insurance coverage to protect them appropriately is a must for RV owners. For this type of vehicle it is usually smart to buy the best protection you possibly can afford. Ask our insurance experts about how to effectively insure your RV.

Five Things You Need to Know about Condo Insurance

What exactly is Condo Insurance?

Because condominiums require their own unique insurance, it’s important to talk to our insurance professionals on what coverage is right for you and your condo.

Condo is required for every condo homeowner. Condo coverage is a little more complicated, as there is usually both coverage by your Home Owner’s Association(HOA) and individual coverage carried by the condo owner. You’ll want to be sure to choose a policy to protect the interior of your home and all of your valuables and memories inside, outside of any coverage for the exterior carried by your HOA (if available). Remember to consider all of your personal property, liability coverage, guest medial coverage, living expenses, building property protection, loan assessment coverage, identity restoration coverage, natural disasters and personal umbrella coverage.

Five Things to Remember about Condo Insurance

1. Importance of Your HOA Master Policy
Condominium owners do not own the entire housing complex, so it’s important to understand what your Home Owner’s Association(HOA) master policy will cover in case of damage or disaster. The master policy is coverage that is for the building exterior and is shared between all of the condo owners. From an insurance perspective, this means that all individual unit owners have a collective responsibility for insuring areas of the complex owned in common—building exteriors, hallway, pool, etc. The master policy does not cover your belongings inside the four walls of your individual unit—that’s why it’s important to carry the right individual condo insurance to protect you and your personal property.

2. Consider Your Deductible
A deductible is the amount of loss you agree to assume before your insurance coverage takes over. Typically, just like car and health insurance, the higher your deductible, the lower the cost of your policy premium. Find out what the master policy deductible is and consider deductible assessment coverage to help with those costs. Many HOAs make individual owners responsible for the entire master policy deductible if the loss is confined to their unit (for example, if a pipe breaks in a unit and floods that apartment). You don’t want to get stuck with a huge bill even if you have purchased insurance.

3. Carefully Consider Your Coverage Amount
Once you’ve determined exactly which parts of your condominium unit you must insure individually, you need to decide how much coverage to acquire. You can calculate an appropriate coverage amount by considering the costs of repairs, renovations and upgrades in your geographic area. So, if there’s a fire, for instance, people have enough insurance coverage to replace their flooring, their cabinetry and their walls.

4. Cash Value vs. Replacement Cost
After you determine the right amount of coverage you need, you will have to choose between two types on policies: cash value or replacement cost.
Stay by considering your premium costs against your risk, in order to decide which is the best type of policy for you. Cash Value policies only replaces the value of the insured item minus depreciation. Replacement Cost policies will cover what it costs to actually replace your items. Depreciation is not used in the replacement cost model.

6. Don’t Forget About Flood and Wind Damage
The U.S. government offers flood and wind damage insurance to all homeowners. Check to insure that your HOA master policy will cover the integrity of the building structure in case of flooding or wind damage. However, you will need to purchase your own policy to protect the interior of your unit and your personal property.

We always recommend that you talk to our insurance specialists to find out the right policy for you.

Why Should You Invest in Renter’s Insurance?

Shoff Insurance of Florida asks you to take a look at the value and investment into a renter’s insurance policy. The more you know, the better decision you can make.

If you are a renter, you don’t need to worry any longer about how to protect your belongings while renting someone else’s home. Renters’ insurance is an insurance policy that provides most of the benefits of homeowners’ insurance. Renters’ insurance does not include coverage for the dwelling or structure. It will cover your personal property against named perils such as fire, theft, and vandalism.

While your landlord may be sympathetic to a burglary you have experienced or a fire caused by your iron, destruction or loss of your possessions is not usually covered by your landlord’s insurance. By purchasing renters insurance, your possessions are covered against losses from fire or smoke, lightning, vandalism, theft, explosion, windstorm and water damage.

Like homeowners’ insurance, renter’s insurance also covers your responsibility to other people injured at your home or elsewhere by you, a family member or your pet and pays legal defense costs if you are taken to court.

Renter’s insurance may also cover your additional living expenses if you are unable to live in your apartment because of a fire or other covered peril. Most policies will reimburse you the difference between your additional living expenses and your normal living expenses but still may set limits as to the amount they will pay.

There are two types of renter’s insurance policies you may purchase:

1 Actual Cash Value – pays to replace your possessions minus a deduction for depreciation up to the limit of your policy

2 Replacement Cost – pays the actual cost of replacing your possessions (no deduction for depreciation) up to the limit of your policy

Talk to our insurance specialists to find out the right policy for you. The usually very low cost of renter’s insurance is well worth the peace of mind that you’ll get once you are truly protected.

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