Insurance does not want to renew homeowners coverage

My homeowners insurance does not want to renew my home coverage due to potentially dangerous conditions on my property.

But it does not spell out what those in any form what those potentially dangerous conditions are.  Great news at 8:23pm on a Monday night.   I have a phone call to my agent and left a message.  My guess, I have a ramp leading up to my front porch and there is no handrail for said ramp.  Maybe it is the side walk that is cracked and is a mess.

But that seems way too simple.  I will wait to see what I hear from my agent's office tomorrow.

I've only heard of this happening due to high risks of (semi-)natural disasters:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/insurance-policy-california-florida-uninsurable-climate-change-first-street/

a ramp to your house makes it uninsurable?

I had a friend who was threatened with non-renewal based on some bad concrete steps - which were actually on the adjacent county property, not hers.

It's worth a phone call to find out some specifics.  They are worried most about liability, so my guess is that the ramp and bad sidewalk are your issues.

camopaint0707 said:

a ramp to your house makes it uninsurable?

A non-code-compliant one could.

Many insurance companies are moving toward limiting their exposure in storm-prone areas. 

State Farm dropped my parents a couple of years ago so if you live near water or in a low-lying area that could be it. 

A lack of hand rails and cracked concrete in a walking path could also cause problems. 

no handrails, bad sidewalk.

I was told i had to repair my back deck or get dropped. Zero specifics, just "repair it". There was nothing visibly wrong with it. 
 

I was already in the process of getting new/better/cheaper home insurance so i ignored them until i canceled. 

It looks like I have too much "miscellaneous debris" on my property.  My agent sent me satellite photos of my property that was probably taken from Google Maps.

And I will admit, I need to clean up some things.  But I still do not know what the insurance company specifically wants me to clean up.  So I will clean up what I can and that will make the neighbors happy anyway.  1st step in a journey and all that.  And after I clean up the agent gets to come out to my house and take pictures of the lack of debris.  Modern life!  And my score card so far:  Over 30 years in the same location with only 1 reported injury.  I cut the tip of one finger off working with flowers.  No yard debris involved.  

My Grandfathers home insurance policy also threatened non-renewal for 'excessive hazards' in the yard.  The 'hazards' were a non-registered yard truck, and two lawnmowers he was repairing for neighbors.  

Thankfully, a quick call and some pictures sufficed, but the message was clear-  Homeowners insurancce is no longer a thing done from a computer.  

In reply to Toyman! :

State Farm dropped my parents a couple of years ago so if you live near water or in a low-lying area that could be it. 

Nope, I figure that I am about 50 feet above sea level so at the worst I might have waterfront some day.

A lack of hand rails and cracked concrete in a walking path could also cause problems. 

The insurance company used Google Map photos to determine I have 103 sq foot of yard debris.  But they do not note in the pictures what the debris is.  And the agent does not know either.  So clean up I shall, and hopefully I clean up the correct um, debris.

Was it State Farm?  They did it to me recently too. 
 

My problem was the shrubs were overgrown  

Find another provider. They have already made their decision, and it can't be reversed. I went with USAA. 
 

They dropped my auto without telling me too. My ex had made a minor claim 2 years ago.

I won't do business with them again. 

Making me happy I have my home owners with AAA, they drive by once a year "yup house is still standing".

I expect one of these years I'll need to do something about the trees on my hill above the house, but from experience at my old house, they don't care until branches are touching roof. 

So some camouflage netting might be good idea in the future for the next time a photo satellite does a fly over? 

We were looking at options for car insurance before our renewed this year and the agent informed me that vehicles 16 years and older would need to be safetied (only required here when ownership changes) again before they would insure it, except the person giving me the quote could wave that requirement if I sent in 4 pictures of the sides of the car and they deemed it "safe".   

In reply to SV reX :

I am not going to say which company it is unless things go sideways.  So far, it is just silly.

My friend had a significant rate increase once, even though he hadn't had a claim in over a decade.

The insurance companies excuse was "you're overdue for something happening" or something to that effect. 

While we were waiting for insurance to finish our house after the fire, near the end of it they informed us (after jumping our payment up from $110/monthly to $500/monthly) they 'would not be renewing the policy' but the reason why was confidential.

The fire was our only claim, and everything was brought up to code and brand new wiring / plumbing we had 0 issues setting up a new contract going with another provider to take affect the day the previous contract finished

In reply to DjGreggieP :

We had a flood that took out the neighborhood, two cars, my shed and actually completely missed my house other than about $400 worth of siding. The insurance company that goes with the Flo dropped us a week after our payment was resolved. 

So insurance companies are basically turning into code enforcement and HOA Karens?

berkeley them.  

Insurance wants to limit their liability, I get that.  But the extent to which they are doing that nowadays is insane.  And technology is making it all possible. 

A friend of Mrs. VCH was telling her, her husband was unable to get life insurance, because he said that he did some auto racing as a hobby.  I told her, you can't tell insurance companies anything about yourself.  You just have to realize you're self-insuring when you do stuff like this.  It's like taking your car to a rally-cross, if you wad it up, you can't expect to file an insurance claim to get it repaired.  Same for your person.  if you're not comfortable with taking those risks, then I guess you have to quit racing.  

In reply to volvoclearinghouse :

Eh, I can see them viewing hazards as an unnecessary risk. Trampolines and pools have long fallen into that category, so why not other hazards? They call it an "attractive nuisance" where trespassers could possibly get hurt beyond normal circumstances. I, for one, would rather see that liability fall squarely on the trespasser, but my point is more about this being "in kind" with insurance companies and not really a new development. 

In reply to cyow5 :

True.  The tenants at my rental house recently got a trampoline, without asking me about it.  When I came by the house one day I saw it there, and had to make them get rid of it.  I felt terrible, they'd already bought it, and didn't realize my insurance would have either dropped me, had a fit about it, or refused to cover if anything happened as a result.  But, it had to go.  

It's not a new development, but as I said, technology is making it way easier for them to turn into nosy neighbors about it.  I can't believe somoene hasn't come up with a way to blur Google image views of one's property.  

In reply to volvoclearinghouse :

I am too lazy to google it, but you can absolutely censor your property in google, at least in street view. For those of y'all whose yards have a bunch of 'hazards', it might not be a bad idea. 

You can, apparently, blur your house from Google Street view.

https://mashable.com/article/how-to-blur-your-house-on-google-street-view

Haven't figured out if/ how to do it from the arial view, yet.

You can/ should do it in Bing, too.  

My insurance dropped me because I wouldn't chop a limb off my neighbors tree. I told them I couldn't cut a limb off my my neighbor's tree. It's not my tree. They were like don't care. So now I'm with a new insurance company. That decision cost them all of my policies and I let them know that immediately. 

In reply to SV reX :

State farm can eat it, they sold me the roadside emergency rider on my auto policy and then dropped me for excessive tows over an 18 month period.  No accidents, just towing for breakdowns (Beater Life).  At least they let me know before the policy ended, now GEICO gets to take my money.