When you take out a mortgage to buy your home, the homeowners insurance is mandatory and usually part of your escrow. But later on after your mortgage has been paid off, it is a good idea to have home owner’s insurance.
We had an umbrella policy for home and auto, and suddenly learned we no longer had homeowner’s insurance. No warning, no letter, no email, no nothing saying we no longer have this coverage. And we had not been dropped. It was never renewed because we did not know it had an expiration date, our car insurance has an expiration date though, and they are quick to remind us of that. We quickly renewed with the company.
Has this happened to anyone else? It might inspire you to go and check if you have it, assuming you thought you were protected.It also happened to our friend.
Kind of! I was late paying a yearly home insurance policy earlier this year. Once I sent in the payment, it was rejected and refunded. Apparently their terms to insure my property had changed in the course of a few weeks. So I had to scramble and work with an agent to get a new policy asap. Ended up paying a couple hundred more for the year.
Not a great experience and there was poor communication on their end to notify me my policy had expired.
Hmm - didn’t know that home insurance gets dropped once escrow vanishes. I’ve only ever paid off mortgage on a sale. Definitely will keep this in mind for any other real estate purchases I make (primary or otherwise) where I pay off the property to follow up with insurance to renew.
Out of curiosity - I’m curious as to why pay off mortgages nowadays given that the interest rates are so low? Seems like you could just make a spread with the same amount of money by putting it in dividends, using the dividends to pay off mortgage, then keeping the difference.
