If you are like millions of Americans who pay for insurance policies on homes in Utah, Arizona or any other state, then it might be tempting to depend on that insurance as a means to take care of your home repairs, primarily by waiting until something breaks completely. If you don’t repair your roof then the next strong storm might do enough harm to make it leak, in which case you can get the insurer to pay to replace it, right?
Not necessarily. Insurance companies resent having to pay more than necessary, and you may find only a patch on your roof instead of the whole thing replaced. Furthermore, it may not be that there is ever any sort of damage you can claim, but a gradual leaking as a result of tiles rotting gently away. Most insurance policies do not cover flooding or other water penetration, which means that you’ll be left with not only the rotting roof, but all subsequent damage to repair on your own dollar.
The fact is that homeowner’s insurance policies are designed as a protection against the unexpected and the unpreventable, such as extreme weather, accidents and natural disasters. They are not responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of your home. That’s your responsibility. It is always going to be less trouble and less money to maintain what you have and to put small repairs in place to prevent large problems. You have no guarantee that your insurance company will pay for any repairs at all in the future, and you can be sure that not only is filing a claim a hassle, but it will result in raised premiums, in which case you may not have saved any money at all.
If you have a rotting tree on your property, you could wait and hope that it’ll be blown over and hit your house so that you can have your insurance take care of it, but do you really want to do that? Would you rather see your home damaged than to just get someone to take the tree out? Be sensible in your approach to insurance and to your house.