home insurance question???

[julie.leeds]

We had 2 sewer back ups within 16 months of each other affecting 15 houses in our neighbourhood. The homeowners believe it is the city's fault.

I made insurance claims on both floods the first was about $50,000 (only about 6" of water throughout the basement) property and contents and the second about $100, 000 about a foot of water in the basement.

Now I no longer have sewer back up insurance.

My insurance company wouldn't even consider going after the city. The city would not except any responsibility in either flood (but after the second one they replaced the sewer lines???) and we had been going back and forth between the city and their insurance company that by the time it was clear that we would be getting nothing in the way of compenstaion or a compassionate grant as they were calling it, It was too late to file a claim against them in small claims court (It was 2 years ago in January)


MY QUESTION IS THIS....

If I am shopping around for new house insurance, and they don't ask about any previous claims, do I have to tell them?

I know its not the insurance companies fault, but our insurance has gone up a significant amount, and if the sewers back up again we will lose everything. I would be willing to pay a higher deductible. The only way they will reinstate our sewer back up is if we get a sump pump, but our weeping bed thing drains back through the house to the storm sewers (illegal now, but our house is like 50+ and that was the done thing then) and that is why a sump pump won't help.

There is more to the story with a history of sewer back up in the area, and the person we bought our house from was bankrupt so we can't go against him...bla bla bla...

[Zonny]

I know next to nothing about insurance (except that I'm required to have it on my home since it mostly still belongs to the bank).

But I'm betting that there's little to no chance of another insurance company 'not asking' about previous claims. They'll know about it, no question. Otherwise, as soon as anyone had some kind of incident that made their rates go up, they'd just go to another company right?

Z

[Insane]

If one insurance won't cover it, likely none will. You are probably going to have to bite the bullet and make some changes. Not to mention that you will have an extremely difficult time selling your house without making modifications to help prevent this (ie making the changes and getting a sump pump installed).

[lalita1985]

My suggestion is to get the problem fixed ASAP. Although I'm not sure on the cost of getting a sump pump installed, my house had issues with the weeping tile and I had to get it all fixed, property regraded in some spots and injections into the foundation to fix the cracks from water sitting on the foundation because of the issue with the weeping tile and it cost less than $3000. In the long run fixing the problem will cost you less than replacing all your contents if the problem happens again.

And I think someone mentioned something about selling your house in the future. If you go to sell your house in the future you may take a significant hit on your asking price because the issues weren't fixed.