What happens when my insurance company won't pay? Insurance Adjuster
Should I sell my house if it's in a fire zone?
- Seller’s Disclosures: What Does a Seller Have to Reveal?
- What happens when my insurance company won't pay? Insurance Adjuster
- REO of the Week
- Homes for sale near Apple
- Mountain View home of the week
- FREE HOME BUYER CHECKLIST HERE https://abitanogroup.com/Homebuyerchecklist
- Home Inspection CHECKLIST HERE https://abitanogroup.com/homeinspectionchecklist
Introduction: When Insurance Companies Don't Pay
What happens when your insurance company doesn't pay you? There's a lot to talk about
The Role of Private Insurance Adjusters
I did a video with this a while back and spoke with a guy that is actually a private insurance adjuster. And he went through the entire process of why the insurance companies are not going to pay you what you deserve, even though you pay a premium every month.
And this is, I think it's timely because of these fires right now, especially since. We have a lot of homes going up for sale that are in fire zones in Santa Clara County, San Benito County, Santa Cruz Mountains, San Mateo. There's a lot of dangerous issues that are happening here. We talk about the calamity and the problems people are having buying homes in fire zones.
Even if you get insurance and your house burns down or your auto gets destroyed, there's other companies that do that as well. My financial advisor, we're talking about what's happening. And this guy is all across the United States. It doesn't matter what happens. If you have a claim, it doesn't matter if it's a fire.
Real-Life Example: Denied Claim and Costly Repairs
And in this example that I had, we had a little drain hose. And my dishwasher fail, this is years ago, and every time I ran it, it spread out some water in the back of the dishwasher and it ran into the other cabinets and it destroyed a bunch of cabinets.
That's a claim and my company State Farm denied me and I didn't know what to do. I didn't know about this guy at this time and it cost me 75, 000 to fix my kitchen. Of course I upgraded, et cetera.
Importance of Hiring an Insurance Expert
But the point is that if I knew, about this guy, he would have been there to help negotiate for me.
And yes, he takes a cut. He takes a big cut of the difference. So if they offered me zero and I got 5, 000, he would have taken one or 2000 from it. Or if I got 50, 000, he would have taken 10 or 20. That's how he makes his money. But you know what? It's worth it because I don't have to do it. I don't know the ins and outs.
I don't understand insurance talk. This guy does. He talks pure insurance lingo. And that's why you hire the right person to negotiate for you, whether it's a commercial lease or selling houses So take your time. To learn about this. There's a link to my blog in the descriptions below.
Make sure you take a quick look at this.
Fire Hazard Zones in California
And if you don't think that California is strewn with fire hazard zones, this is a good example Just in Los Gatos, most of Los Gatos and Montecito and Saratoga are in the high fire zones. The very high fire zones, right?
Look, this whole place is gone. Now that's where all that fire is. I think I'm pretty sure. It's all gone. So don't think it can't happen to you. Understand what you're, Options are, but also get in the know of how to protect yourself and your family.
Disclosure Requirements for Home Sellers
Disclosures. It's just a big thing. What does the seller have to reveal? Anything material, You switched out your light switch. You switched out your plugs. You put floors, your dog peed on the floor. Somebody died on your property. You remodeled your house. Remodeled the kitchen. remodeled your bathroom. Why wouldn't you want to disclose everything? Here's my point. Anything that could affect the sale of your home should be disclosed. But what if it scares away a buyer? You don't want that buyer.
Dealing with Buyer Concerns and Negotiations
If you have a buyer going, Oh, my God, I'm going through this right now with my listing in Hollister.
We have an offer and there's a little bit of water damage underneath the patio, the deck and the way the agent read it is that she needs to see a structural pest inspection. After it's replaced. So we're just having it replaced. Basically it's just water damage and a little bit of mildew.
She's making this big deal out of it. It's going to cost a thousand dollars. If we let her take care of it, it probably would have cost her 15 grand. When you disclose everything, it doesn't protect you from, Hey, I want this fixed. The way we negotiate is this is what we're telling you.
This is everything that you're doing. You're very welcome to have your own inspections, but you got to tell us about it, this is what we're disclosing to you. Take it or leave it in Southern California and parts of Nevada, it's on the buyer to do their due diligence and then come back and say, I found this damage.
I want you to fix it or make it whole somehow. We do everything up front. So you don't have to worry about it. You don't come back and say, Hey Mr. Seller, I found 20, 000, 30, 000 worth of termite damage that you didn't disclose. I want it fixed
I want credit or I want to lower the price. So make it easy, right? Disclose it. If you want to be a market maker, you're going to go through a lot of different things. if you think, Oh, substantially, I don't care what the buyer gets.
You can do that. And in a firestorm of a market, you can get away with that kind of stuff. You don't have to disclose it, but it was going to come back and bite you. When I sell this house, I'm going to have to disclose everything, new windows, new floors, new insulation, new bathrooms, new kitchens, twice because of the water damage. I had to disclose that, right? I painted the house. I painted the inside of the house multiple times. I. Dropped the vault ceiling to a tray ceiling.
I did all that work myself. I did the electrical work myself. I have to disclose all that kind of stuff. I did the patio. I did the landscaping three times. I put a pergola out there without a permit because I just don't believe in the permit process when it's outside of the house.
Ultimately, it's up to the buyer to understand what they're buying, but you as a seller are responsible for disclosing everything that is material to the house. So make sure that you disclose it because it will come back and bite you in the ass. when you're selling your house, you want to sell it.
To the right buyer, not to any buyer. if you have five buyers in the pool and one freaks out and says, Oh my God, there's too much damage from the inspection report you don't want that. There's four other buyers that are out there. That'll buy your house.
They'll read through the disclosures, understand what they're buying. That buyers, just not ready to buy a house yet. Not saying he's a bad person. He's just a little afraid. He doesn't understand the process. He thinks, Oh my God, the world's falling apart.
Personal Experience with Home Buying and Selling
And I was there too. My first house.
I was an ignorant buyer. I didn't understand it, even though I went through the entire course before I bought the house. I got my real estate practices or principles class at De Anza and I listened to the instructor and I understand every process yet still there was some anxiety going behind it.
Then I bought my house and guess what? The house didn't burn down.
There were some little things that had to be done. I fixed those improved it and then sold it I moved over here and that's where I've been for the last 22 years So there's the anxiety and the mindset and psychology behind it.
But make sure you disclose everything that you've ever done to that property because it only helps you. go back and get this video. Watch this video. It's an important video. It's timely because right now this is, there's a lot of houses coming up for sale you'll see that we have a ton of houses in the fire zones that are for sale You got to know what you're buying. Okay.
Featured Homes of the Week
Houses near Apple. Yep. This is the Apple house of the week. Look at this flat roof, three bedroom, two bath, almost 1200 square feet built in 1954. Not my listing. 1. 9 million. And it's
Apple right here. So it's still a little bit of a distance, but it's not a 40 minute drive.
So it's nicely updated, but architecturally it's dated. You have a flat roof, semi sloped, right? You have the little beams there, but everything's sloped. These are called Rinconadas I think it's a style that was very old Nice new bathrooms, decent patio, could have been power washed, but there you go.
Floor plans guys, we have this program, all realtors have a program now, that we can go and take the floor plans. You use your phone and you scan each room and it does it for you automatically. And it's free and there's no reason not to have a floor plan. Mountain View home of the week. And the reason why I picked this is it's not very close to Castro, which is over here, but it was the closest one.
There's not a whole lot for sale. Not my listing 2. 3 million Solana drive, three bedrooms, one and a half baths, 1, 300 square feet built in 1952. Boy, I'm going with the old ones today. Again, sloped roof. This is a, that's a vaulted roof right here, but that looks like it's an add on. These are the slope gross right here.
Galley kitchen, Semi updated. architecturally, nothing's different. Just new cabinets, new floor, painted walls. Good. It's nice. 1. 8 million and you can walk to work or 2. 3 million. Excuse me. Talked about this one before. It's been overpriced and it's, this is the bank owned property of the week.
This is now almost 2. 1 million, three bedroom, two and a half bath, 2, 100 square feet on a quarter acre lot. in the Rose garden area.
Let's take a look at the pictures. the original price was. 2. 2 million. It's been on market 138 days and now it's dropped 120, 000.
It's a pretty house. Just 2 million is a lot for this considering the fact that it's, semi updated. Wonder what's wrong with it. Maybe there's a foundation issue that was found, It's only a three bedroom.
Market Statistics and Analysis
Let's go to the stats. The 40 days on market stats of the week, Santa Clara County, single family homes.
There's 88 houses that have not sold in over 40 days. And 90 days is 47 bank owned properties in the Bay area are 65 and all of California is 205. Right now we have 270 single family homes for sale in San Jose. We need to be at about a thousand. Same thing with Santa Clara. We need to be about 2000.
We have 600. It's going up a little bit, but we're nowhere near we're about 25 percent of where we 30 percent really where we need to be. To make it a balanced market. economics one on one, supply and demand supplies here, supplies way here, even though demand's down from where it has been, it's still far and above where we are.
That's why prices continue to go up. Thanks for watching. I'm Vito with Abitano. We'll see you out there.
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