flood insurance,fire insurance or none-

[Rich Weese]

A recent post questioned whether owners buy flood insurance. There were a few posts and replies.
I've owned properties and paid insurance on well over 1000 homes in the last 40 years. Do you know how many insurance claims I've made? 1 for a plumbing flood.
There are over 40,000 members on BP, a good cross section. I want to know, how many have actually HAD a flood or fire? My belief is that insurance is a very bad investment! What are the %'s? I've never even known a house in my neighborhood to have a fire.
I have 5 condos in Cancun, some for over 30 years. I've had ONE hurricane hit, in the entire time. I had no insurance and the complete fix-up was about 12K and took 2 months. I'd have spent 10 times that if I'd bought insurance.
What are your actual experiences? Good or bad investment? Looking for %'s. Rich

[Eddie Ziv]

Originally posted by Mark Yuschak:

I'm one of the very few who has had a fire claim. This past July one of my rentals suffered a massive fire due to careless cooking.

The tenant was ill and took some medication. She then proceeded to cook something on the stove, but allegedly got tired and laid down. The burner on the stove was left on when she went to lay down and the rest is history... (including the tenant). She perished in the fire. The repair to the house came in at $85,000 and I had $50,000 of coverage. Nonetheless, the insurance company and I settled and I got a nice payout. I had to pay off the land contract holder first. The insurance company paid to get the house demolitioned and now I'm left with a vacant lot.

At this point I can't even give away the lot for $0. I've had it on Craigslist for free and not one bite. I'll just let it revert back to the County due to back taxes...

For all subsequent proprties that I've bought free and clear I don't put a fire policy on them. I simply carry liability only. For the flip houses I was carrying a fire policy on each, but I have mixed feelings on whether or not I will continue to do so.

There are places where the price of SFR are so low, that vacant lot would not make much sense since any attempt rebuild would be too expensive.
I wonder, Mark if you could put in a mobile home and whether or not it would be cost effective? Another option, since you're paying taxes and possibly maintenance on the lot, is to try to donate it to the city which may use it for recreation, parking, whatever.