Things to Consider When Choosing an Insurance Company for Your Sharps Chapel Home
We’ve never had a second home before and there was a learning curve we had to go through for choosing the best insurance company for us to insure our Sharps Chapel home.
We’ve been with Allstate insurance for over 30 years for the homes we’ve had in Ohio. So naturally, we went to them first to get an insurance quote. Imagine our surprise when we found out that they would not insure a log home! Their logic was that if there was a fire, they would have to replace the whole log wall rather than a smaller spot if there was just drywall.
Our Allstate agent did provide an alternative company out of Michigan (rated A++) that would insure it but it was pretty pricey.
Another company I contacted was Geico (that gekko is so cute! Oh, the power of advertising.) They used Liberty Mutual to insure homes. Everything was looking good until they did further research on the fire department. Even though the Sharps Chapel volunteer fire department is fairly close, by our standards, they did not like the fact that it was not manned full-time. The nearest manned fire department was over 20 miles away. So, they would not cover us.
I was starting to get worried. But don’t fret, this story does have a happy ending.
At this point, I started contacting some of the other big names in insurance. Bingo. State Farm would cover us without requiring that we change our primary — but at a cost.
I then contacted our real estate agent and she said the homeowner had insurance through the Farm Bureau. When I contacted them, they would only insure us if they also had our primary residence. We still weren’t ready to do this yet, and certainly not with what we perceived as a minor insurance company.
However, I later learned that in Ohio, Nationwide is associated with the Farm Bureau. My husband had experience with Nationwide before we got married and had a comfort level with them. Nationwide, again, required that they have our primary residence, but money talks, and it turned out that Nationwide had the best prices for us with quoting both our primary and secondary homes. And, by joining the Farm Bureau (anyone can join – you don’t have to be a farm), it more than paid for itself in additional discounts from Nationwide.
It was a little scary running into companies that would not insure us at first. But comforting to know that there were still several options open to us. I hope that this information will give you a comfort level to proceed with your dream home in Sharps Chapel. Good luck.
Trivia About Nationwide
My husband, Jim, learned a bit of trivia about the Farm Bureau and Nationwide. Back in the day (in other words, I don’t have the exact date), the Farm Bureau was created to offer lower insurance to farmers — the logic being that they would not have as many accidents as people in the city. Today, the funds raised by the Farm Bureau membership help support the TV show “Our Ohio”. You can go to You Tube and enter “Our Ohio” to see a number of the videos. Here is a link to one that features “Jungle Jim’s“ — a unique, unbelievably huge, mega grocery store. This video not only shows you the store, but shows you how to make a “3 Berry Walnut Maple Streudel”. Definitely, worth the trip – it is just north of Cincinnati in Fairfield, if you are in the area.
