Hacker News Reader

Comment by tfandango | Hacker News Reader

I live in Oklahoma. Contrary to popular belief, getting your house destroyed by a tornado is unlikely. But hailstorms are on the rise and roof replacements are becoming more frequent because of them. Insurance has gone up A LOT for everyone, regardless of insurer, and for me despite installing hail resistant shingles last time. I am wondering what happens when people here can no longer afford insurance even though these are not luxury second homes. My agent told me that Texas and Oklahoma are becoming the most expensive states to insure.

View on HN

It's more that those states are becoming the most expensive to maintain intact houses in, with the increased insurance a side effect of that. I know someone in TX that has needed a new roof like 6-7 times in 10 years because of hail damage - the insurance company has been bleeding money on their house for a decade, but that's because the house has actually been sustaining significant damage every single year. The only answers to that over any length of time must be: 1) improve roofing so that they're not sustaining damage so frequently (even if it increases costs), 2) decrease the value of housing so much that replacing the roof out-of-pocket every year just becomes 'cost of doing business', or 3) stop living there because it's just intrinsically expensive. "Pay $1k yearly insurance and average $10k yearly damage" for a whole region is not going to last much longer.

I think I am paying 3500/year now, up from 2800. My house is on the larger side (4 bedrooms), so far, I've had 2 roofs (one on my prior smaller house) in 20+ years. For me it's been 1 roof every 10 years. But I know someone who got a roof replaced and it was immediately destroyed again by a second storm. I on the other hand, fought with State Farm for 6 months about some dumb piece of metal that was dented. So, while we got hit by the second storm and likely sustained more damage, it didn't matter.

It's becoming more difficult to find a place to live that does not have some potential issue, be it water, weather, heat, cold, earthquakes.... supervolcanos :)

At that point, wouldn't a standing seam metal roof be the best investment? The cost is about 3x, but beats an annual roof replacement.

I've wondered the same about storm damage in Florida. There has to be a better option than shingles, even really high quality shingles.

+1 for metal roofs -- I run an insurance company that specializes in high risk areas. Metal roofs are a superior technology to shingles and tiles.

Metal roofs last 3x longer but cost 7x more.

Depending on climate there’s some other options too.

Metal roofs last 3x longer but cost 7x more.

... in a non-hurricane zone, right?

Sounds like some of these coastal areas are on a ~5 year roof replacement cycle. Up here in DC, shingles last for 30+.

Yes, in fact I have that as part of my roof, mostly for looks, I guess. It obviously doesn't ever leak, but it did get banged up pretty good and insurance ended up replacing it because of that. Personally, I could get used to just having a dented-up but sound metal roof for 50 years, and some people here do that. I'm not sure what the effect is on their insurance rates.

That would be option 1 - I could easily see insurance companies saying that insuring a shingle roof costs 2-3x what insuring a metal roof costs, but then it's a question of who pays to replace an existing shingle roof with a much more expensive metal roof? The existing structure is insured for its replacement costs, not an expensive upgrade in the case it's damaged, but clearly current prices don't actually accurately reflect current risks.

Should be "easy" for the insurer to say "you get one more shingle replacement, then we dump you." At that point, the customer either buys a metal roof or moves. Market functioning correctly, no?

This is one thing I've never really understood about the market for insurance. Wouldn't the customer's best answer be, "OK, thanks for the new roof, I understand that you're dropping me, so I'll just switch to your competitor"?

And then wouldn't it be in the interest of the insurers to maintain a shared list of "bad" (unprofitable) customers and freeze them out? Which is already a bit of what credit scores are for?

Insurance companies handle this today by either refusing polices on uninsured homes, or pricing those policies much higher.

"Your previous insurer dropped you, there must have been a reason."

And, yeah, when applying for a policy, the questionnaire should include "have you filed a claim for X, Y, Z in the last 2 years?" Auto insurance does this already.

They already do. If you think that Google’s data collection practices are intrusive, you have no idea how much these folks know about you.

Insurance companies have a privileged legal position to do all sorts of stuff.

Upvote for HNers in Oklahoma!

ha one for you too then!

one solution is to exclude hail damage to roofs from basic home insurance policy. Similar to how earthquake and flooding is a separate policy.

It would likely be required by mortgage companies because a new roof is 20-30k on the low end. Otherwise the risk of losing their investment is quite high.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com