Mark Schreier Realtor with Century 21 American Homes Real
Estate Syosset, N.Y. and special guest
Robert (Rob) Zabbia owner of Allstate Zabbia Insurance agency share money
saving flood (Insurance) tips as well as other important flood insurance
information. A must watch for anyone
buying in or currently owning a house in a flood zone.
Topics Covered:
1)
How can I reduce the cost of my current flood
insurance policy or save money when purchasing a new flood insurance policy?
2)
How can I find out if my property is in a flood
zone?
3)
How can I find out what flood zone my property
is in?
4)
What will and won’t be covered by my flood
insurance?
5)
How long will it take for my flood insurance
policy to become active?
6)
What is the National Flood Insurance Program
(NFIP)?
Make sure to check my other videos on this topic:
Should I Buy A House IN A Flood Zone?
Is My House in A Flood Zone?
Robert Zabbia
Allstate Insurance Agent
Transcript:
Hello everybody this is Mark Schreier from Century 21 American Homes Real Estate
and today's video topic is flood insurance it's ironic that seven years
and today's video topic is flood insurance it's ironic that seven years
ago Hurricane Sandy actually hit Long Island I get one of those reminder text
messages actually from my facebook page if something I posted so seven years ago
we got hit with the so called hundred year storm so I thought it'd be good to
bring on an expert who is an expert in selling flood insurance to give us some
insight about the process and his name is Robert Zabbia Robert can you explain
a little about your background and then we'll get into our questions okay my
Rob Zabbia I own the Zabbia Insurance Agency we are the second generation with
with my dad with Allstate and my dad actually took over from his uncle so
we have four generations in the insurance business so we've been doing
this quite a while. We had a lot of customers. We had over 800 customers affected by
Sandy with flood claims and you know so we learned a lot. They don't see you
until you use it you don't really know exactly what's in there because there's
a lot of things that you know it's in the policy it's on paper but when you
see it in action it's a little bit different than than what you learn so it
was a big learning curve that was thrown at us because it was so many different
scenarios that never happened before so until you actually see it it's a little
bit difficult all right thanks Rob I know this is
definitely a significant topic for a lot of homeowners on Long Island or anybody
that lives on an island because water surrounded by water on all sides on Long
Island we have the North Shore of the South Shore I live in the middle of the
island so I'm not affected that much but I want the first question I have and I
have five questions and the last question is going to be a question on
how to save money on flood insurance tips that you can give homeowners that
are buying in in a flood zone what they can do to possibly save some money maybe
while they're there they've already bought the flood insurance or even
before they go through the process things that they can look for so stay
tuned for that at the latter part of this video question number one does
basically does my community participate - in the National Flood Insurance
Program the acronym NFIP can you explain a little about what that means I have no
clue what does NFIB I know I just gave the acronym but for those people don't
know what that means what's it all about all right so the
National Flood Insurance Program is run by FEMA so it's a part of FEMA program
and it was put in place because all the private companies pulled out of flood
insurance so people couldn't sell homes that were near the water unless they had
the flood insurance so the government stepped in and created the NFIP from
FEMA and most communities I think I don't know of any communities on Long
Island that don't participate they're having a couple of them that the
government has told them they had to make changes otherwise they we're gonna
fold their participation but they you know a lot of them have brought up you
know their sewer systems or drainage things like that in order to participate
in the Flood Insurance Program and the way you find out is that you know
basically if you call an insurance agent they can tell you whether you know you
qualify or not and get it both and if you're buying a home you know you can
ask the current homeowners if they have flood insurance because it's a good idea
to take over whatever they have right actually one of my recent deals the
homeowners saved a significant amount of money by being able to take over the
flood insurance that was existing on the house already they were getting quotes
that were crazy very expensive and when they found out that they were able to
they were able to buy for the current policy keep it transfer it we're very
happy to find out the amount of money they can save since that's there a very
good tip before we go any further I just wanna do some basic housekeeping YouTube
101 I guess you would say if you're new to the channel definitely thank you
to stop and by please remember to subscribe definitely like it and share
it with somebody that you think might have a need for this type of information
the name of the channel is Real Estate 101 everything you need to know about
buying selling residential or real estate and with that being said let's go on to
question number two how long what is a flood zone you how do you know if you're
in a flood zone in general like where can I find out that information? Well you
can go on to the the FEMA website National Flood Insurance website and
plug in the address if you want to do it on your own or you can call an insurance
agent or broker and they'll be able to do a search for you a lot of times the
banks will do it and because they the banks will require the add flood
insurance if you're at a higher risk zone but it's a good idea before you
sign a contract to check on it yourself get a quote for the home insurance and
flood insurance because feeling especially the house close to the water
it might just because the car like you you had a great example your client was
able to save with the flood insurance they can't necessarily do that with the
home insurance so it might make them house out of reach so it's a good idea
to just look before they sign the contract if they're buying and if you're
selling you should also don't don't cancel the flood insurance because your
mortgage is paid off because of that fact that makes your house way more
marketable if you can get skip somebody the existing flood policy and then that
grandfathered in and they could take over that much lower rate and somebody
who would be starting scratch that's actually a great point and when you're
shopping for a home make sure you find out what their current flood insurance
premiums are because it can save you a lot of money in the long run great tip
question number three how long does it take for my insurance to go into effect
I'm buying a house I put the money down you know pay the premium sign the papers
with the flood insurance broker in this case how long would it take for that
policy to be in effect so I know I'm protected well a home purchase and a
refinance is the only time a flood insurance policy can be made effective
immediately although wise there's a 30-day waiting period because they just
think about it when everybody knew sandy was coming up everybody wanted to buy a
policy that you know that weekend but it's a 30-day waiting period for that
reason there's a lot of people weighed by the policy right before the storm and
then they'll you know file a claim and there's no money coming in in order to
pay for the claim so yeah if you're buying a house it'll go into effect
right away but like I said it's a good idea to get the quotes and get it all
set up way ahead of time because we have seen deals fall apart before something
changed right before the closing so don't put it off till you know it the
day before to get the flood insurance great great point now everybody who is
definitely using it utilizing a mortgage to buy a house is required to have home
insurance the banks will give them a mortgage without but a lot of people or
some people pay cash and what is covered and what is not covered with flood
insurance because homeowners insurance covers a whole array of things some
people some things not covered and I know like if you have water backup and
how do I know this because I own a house and that this issue and they say unless
you have a certain writer you're not getting covered for water backing up if
it comes through whatever magical way it came through and the average person is
not an insurance guy does not understand this so what is not covered let's start
with that from a flood insurance policy all right so what's not covered from
flood insurance is any content in your basement
so they'll cover in the basement they'll cover the the walls they'll cover the
structure they'll cover the heating system the air conditioning if you have
a freezer refrigerator washer/dryer those things will be covered but if you
have a finished basement the furniture and all of that wouldn't be covered by
the flood insurance the and they'll only cover up to the flood damage on the
walls so just imagine you have six inches of water in your in your basement
they're gonna cut the sheetrock at 10 inches and then you just can't have to
fix it they're not gonna replace the whole walls Wow so that's a great point
so as high as that water goes is as high as they're replacing and what about we
know when you get water in a home the electrical system is going to be
affected if it went up to the outlets yes possibility of mold and all that
stuff is that mold wouldn't be covered the the remediation to dry everything
out would be covered and if there was like some mold there because it you know
that the damage happened yesterday and there's mold today that would be covered
but if you had a flood and now we're you know so many years after sandy if
there's mold now from Sandy that's not come if you can't go back to the flood
insurance company because that happens over a long period of time so it's it's
done in an accidental the other thing is contents they don't replace the contents
they depreciate so if that washer and dryer you had gets destroyed you paid
five hundred dollars for them they might only be worth two hundred dollars now
you're only getting the two dollars okay this is I guess I'll call a
question for a because as you're speaking I another question came up how
is there any overlap between your homeowners insurance and your flood
insurance and the point you just made a lot of people purchase homeowners
insurance where they have replacement costs where it's not depreciated so if
my flood insurance is depreciating man I'm only getting two hundred bucks for
my thousands all the washing machine will my homeowners insurance
pick up the difference well okay but it depends on this is this is where people
just like they get a quote and they just go with the lowest quote and the reason
that it's the lowest quote is because of the exclusions and until you have a
claim you don't really know where your exclusions are and one of the biggest
ones is the water backup coverage that you talked about right that could act as
an overlap unless your company doesn't cover and if it's due to flood waters so
during sandy you know we deal with several different carriers and during
sandy most of the carriers would not cover the water backup because it was
caused by the tidal surge brain and we had one carrier that covered it so that
acted as your overlap so they had $5,000 worth of water backup coverage to cover
whatever the flood insurance wouldn't cover in the basement okay if it sounds
confusing ladies and gentlemen it is that's why you need people like Rob
Zabbia to explain all the details for you and the last question the one I said
that people should wait for. Is there any way that a homeowner can save
money either you know let's say they have an active
policy now and they're in a flood zone it's a required insurance or they're
thinking about purchasing a house that happens to be in a flood zone and by the
way I'm going to put a link up on the top to other videos that I've made one
is should I buy a house in a flood zone and the other one is have a check and
see if your property is in fact in a flood zone so I'm gonna put links to
those in this video as well but back to the question is there any way that
anything a homeowner can do to save money and reduce the cost of flood
insurance moving forward yeah there's a couple different things there are some
private companies that are coming into the market they're very very limited on
their appetite though because obviously they're going to pick and choose because
the National Flood Insurance Program assets
everybody as long as it meets you know all the criteria whereas the private
companies can pick and choose that they want but again you need to look at who
the private company is I only deal with one company that's a private carrier
because they're the only one that I'm confident enough after sandy would would
be able to withstand this for a lot of these other companies I'm not sure about
and they all have ratings so thank you buy an A rated bond well listen you only
want to buy an A rated insurance policy and it's a lot of BCD rated insurance
companies out there so stay away from those but so look you shop and see if
there's a private carrier that's good and reputable that will be able to do it
for a better price and better coverage the other thing is is an elevation
certificate you can hire an engineer and they can look because let's say if
you're looking to buying a house and the people is sweared in the fifty years
they never had any water or sandy they didn't have any water but they're in the
high-risk column it could be because that house is a little bit higher and it
could qualify for a lower rate so for you know a couple hundred dollars the
engineer can come out and they can check it to see if we would qualify for the
lower and how do you find those engineers that do this type of thing
because that's a great point you can go yeah I'm sure you can search them on the
web I work with a couple that I know that are really really good at it and
they'll also do different things because like crawlspaces could disqualify them
because they look at the lowest ground floor level so if you have a crawlspace
that's below ground that's now the lowest level so you can put flood vents
in you can fill in part of the crawlspace to bring it up high enough
there's a bunch of things that you can do that could cut the premium from seven
eight thousand dollars a year to two or three thousand dollars a year which
makes you a huge difference definitely particularly you want to work with
somebody who is really good at knowing the ins and outs for the program the
biggest problem that we have is you know there there's companies that do write
your own so like all state travelers they'll write it but it's all still a
FEMA policy right the problem is is it still goes through FEMA and the people
at FEMA half the time don't know these rules you know they're government
employees are not necessarily trained very well so you need to have a good
engineer that knows the ins and outs and then that way we can have the discussion
with the underwriters and find the underwriter that knows what they're
talking about so we can make sure that we're getting the right rate great Thank
You Rob Zabbia from Zabbia Insurance I'm going to be
putting a link to the websites that he mentioned where you can check on your
own and also to Rob's company website as well thanks again Rob and we are good to
go great thank you hello yes I'm talking to
you the person that watched my video to the very end thanks a lot for watching
if you enjoyed it please give me a big thumbs up subscribe to my YouTube
channel like me on Facebook I am a Licensed Real Estate Agent in New York
State but I also have a referral service that deals nationwide so if you're
looking for to buy or sell a house anywhere in the United States please
send me a text contact me via phone and I'll set you up with a local
professional in your area if you're in my vicinity I'd be more than happy to
help you out in any of your real estate transactions that you'd like this is
Mark Schreier from Century 21 American Homes and I'll talk to you soon
