There are few things in life as stressful and exciting as buying a new home. The search for that amazing home in a great neighborhood can be super fun. Researching the schools and what the taxes are be may be less fun. Picking a paint color and what kind of flooring to put in may test your relationship a bit. Kids fighting over which bedroom is another thing to sort out. There are an endless number of things to figure out when you buy a home. One of the important things to consider is Homeowners Insurance. Yay, this is way better than planning a party, think about all the great coverage to decide on! Settle down, yes you can get water backup coverage on the new home!
Now what should you know before you buy the house of your dreams? What might impact your home insurance?  A very important thing to find out about is prior insurance claims. Most people don’t even think about this as being a problem. If you had your home inspected and the inspector says everything looks good then there shouldn’t be an issue right? Wrong! Claims that the prior owner had on the home can impact your ability to buy insurance and it can impact the cost you pay for insurance. If the prior owner had a water claim some companies consider this an issue inherent with the home, not the person living there. If the prior owner had multiple claims related to the pipes or anything else you might have a hard time getting coverage. Insurance companies are very cautious and they don’t want to take on a risk that might quickly have a claim after insuring the property.
That's why it is important to make sure you ask about any claims and that in your disclosures they list any prior claims. It is also very helpful to get a letter from their insurance company explaining what the cause of the claim was and how it was remedied. This will be the one time you have the opportunity to get this information. If you don't get it now you will never get it.
Location, location, location! Isn’t that what realtors always say? It’s about where you are buying more than what you are buying. Well, the same can be said for insurance. In the last year insurance companies have made it much harder to write a policy for any home located near native growing brush areas. If you are looking at a home with an amazing view and just open land behind you, it will be a challenge to find home insurance. Most companies I work with now require a minimum of 500 feet from any native growing brush areas. So, if you are looking at an exterior home you might want to work on your insurance sooner rather than later. Don’t wait until the last minute, you might need to call several insurance agents to find one company that will cover the property. And, expect to pay more when you have fewer options.
I did insurance for one couple who bought a beautiful home. It looked like it had been recently remodeled and was ready to be moved into. Well, when I ran the loss history on the home there was a huge claim that had recently been paid out. Come to find out an elderly person had died in the home and it was some time before her body was discovered. So, the claim was for clean up of the property. Floors had been replaced, walls had been painted, air ducts had been scrubbed. Unfortunately, because of the large amount paid out on the claim the new buyer had to pay additional premiums for their insurance. I tried to explain to the company that someone dying in the home was not a continuous risk to the property. But, without any proof why the claim was paid the customers were stuck.  
Make sure you get any claims information on the home before you close escrow on the property. Don't wait until the last minute to insure the house. It's easy to future date the insurance policy and it saves you any stress if you run into any problems along thew way.
​Call me when you go into escrow on your dream home. 951-395-0754

No one ever thinks that they will have an accident in their brand new car. Especially one that you just rolled off the lot with. But, things do happen and that's why we have auto insurance. Let's take a look at one of the saddest cases I've ever seen. I saw recently that comedian Tracy Morgan went out and bought himself a ridiculously expensive Bugatti.  It looks like online you can pick one of these cars up for uhm over two million. Within five minutes of rolling off the lot and waving goodbye to the happy salesman he got in a fender bender. Now, it’s bad enough when your new Corolla has a small accident. I go a little nuts when I get a door ding on a new car. Now, this is next level exotic car stuff. From the video’s I’ve seen online it looks like a silver Honda CRV cut in front of him at an intersection. The damage was mostly to the front bumper and the driver’s side front quarter panel. Nothing major, but I can’t imagine what those two pieces of that car will cost to replace. Hopefully the Honda driver has high enough limits to pay to fix the car. I carry pretty high limits but even my coverage would tap out pretty quickly if I ran into that fancy car.
What are all the insurance implications of this accident. First, if you buy yourself a new car you always want to make sure you have auto insurance in place before you leave the car dealership. Many insurance companies will give you a grace period usually about 30 days to add a car onto your insurance policy. They will apply the coverage you had on the old car onto the new vehicle. But, and this is important. If you just had liability coverage on your old car you may not automatically be covered with collision on the new car. And that collision is the coverage that protects your new car. And, if you have no insurance when you head over to the dealer at least get a quote on the vehicle you are looking at. I've had plenty of people call me from the dealership and I've been able to start a policy and email them proof of insurance so they can drive their new car home.
A few things to remember before you go out and get yourself a new car. Make sure you know how your company will handle adding the car.  Don’t forget to add that new car onto your insurance before the grace period ends.  Additionally, make sure you have enough coverage on your policy to protect you if you do run into a Bugatti.  And do comedians really make enough money to buy a Bugatti? Call me if you need insurance for a new car! 951-395-0754  Or, if you want to hire me on as a comedian. My salary starts at the low seven figures. I do bar mitzvah's and quinceanera's! 

 I once again tuned into Handel on the Law for a little while over the weekend. It always seems to have great insurance questions that Handel answers in usually a half baked way. Clearly, he is great at giving marginal legal advise, the same also applies to his marginal insurance advice.  In order to give slightly less marginal advice I took the information from a few calls he had and added a bit more useful information.
The first call out of the gate was from a woman who just adopted a dog. I really respect people who adopt dogs, because inherently any dog that has been either returned to a shelter or abandoned by their owner has some issue. I remember when I was looking for my first dog I went to a shelter. I found this beautiful English Mastiff and I watched in amazement as he tore a comforter to shreds. He was just demolishing that thing and throwing the bits all about his enclosure. Uhm, one look at that dog and my head flashed to what my couch would look like once I brought that big fella home. It wouldn’t be pretty and I moved on to look at the next dog. Okay, so back to this lady’s insurance question. She adopted a dog and the dog went running out the front door after she brought him home. It then headed straight for the neighbors house and got into a fight with the dog from next door. The next door dog was chained up and it sounds like both dogs sustained injuries and the owner of the chained up dog also got injured trying to break up the fight.  Now, who is to blame? Well, it is pretty clear in this case, if you have your dog off leash and they are not under your control you are 100 percent liable. You could have the sweetest dog, and the chained up dog could be a monster. But, it is your responsibility to keep the dog under your control.  This lady then went on to say that she got a letter from the neighbor attorney stating they wanted money for damages. Handel kept repeating that she should turn it over to her homeowners association. I think he meant she should turn it over to her Homeowners Insurance. And, yes she should. The home insurance company would try to pay first out under medical coverage, if that wasn’t enough to cover the injuries then the liability portion would kick in. As long as her homeowners insurance policy offers animal liability protection and they don’t exclude the particular dog breed she has, then all should be fine. The only issue she may run into is the insurance company in the future may decline to cover any liability claims from this particular dog. Or, the insurance company could also non renew her home insurance because of this claim. Both are bad situations and not one you would want to find yourself in.  If you are adopting a dog make sure the breed you bring home is covered under your policy. You don't want to have a situation where your home insurance will deny a claim for your new furry friend.
The second call I heard was from an Englishman who called in because his fancy Jaguar got rear ended. How appropriate, an English guy driving a Jaguar. Was he drinking tea and eating a crumpet at the time of the accident too? I'd like to know. Now, the person who hit him only had 25 thousand property damage which is going to only cover a portion of a Jaguar if the car is a total loss. For whatever reason this guy hired a lawyer. He probably heard one of those cute jingles about calling an attorney first. After the lawyer collected his fee the Jaguar guy was left with 2 thousand dollars to cover his car and his well paid lawyer said, “hey buddy, just call your own insurance company and have them pay you for the rest” (not the actual conversation just an interpretation of what the lawyer might say). Ah, what great advice. Well, what English guy should have done is call the insurance company that hit him. They would have paid the 25 thousand to fix the car. If that wasn’t enough he should then call his insurance and they would pay the balance. Assuming, he had collision on the car. Now Handel seems to think Uninsured Motorist pays to fix the car. That is incorrect. The Property Damage pays to fix the car and the Uninsured Motorist pays for the drivers injuries. We never got to find out if the driver was claiming injuries. Handel pretty much gave him the same advice his attorney did, call your insurance company. One take away from this is make sure your Uninsured Motorist coverage is sufficient enough to cover your lost wages in case you get injured by someone with no insurance of low limits. And make sure your car is covered with collision. Both will make getting your car and your injuries taken care of much easier.
That’s all I had time to listen to. But, it was another exciting addition of "Handel on the Law". Check him out on KFI Saturday mornings around nine. His website is www.handelonthelaw.com. If you are looking for some insurance quotes don’t tune into the radio but give me a call at 951-395-0754. Keep those dogs on leashes people!

​When you work in the insurance business you learn a lot about different banks and how they treat their customers. Some are great, some not so much. One bank recently made headlines because they settled a class action lawsuit for placing insurance for customers without properly notifying them. That bank was Wells Fargo and they just paid 386 Million dollars according to Reuters! That’s a lot of money folks! You can read the story here: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-wells-fargo-settlement-idUSKCN1T81RM They also denied any wrong doing according to the article. So, I guess that means I'm not admitting to any wrong information in this article either.
What does this settlement really mean, what did the bank do that was so bad?  Here’s the way I’m thinking things went down and how people ended up with auto insurance policies they didn't ask for.
You go to a auto dealership looking for a new car. You find yourself a car you like. The dealership and you negotiate a price to buy the car for. Then the finance department goes to work. They run your credit, they figure out what loan rate you are most likely to get. They tell you the monthly payments and if you agree you roll off the lot with a new to you car. Now, when the finance department tells you what you are going to be paying it is based off them selling the loan to a bank. The buyer of the car doesn’t always know what bank the loan will be placed with. So, when people call to add a car to their insurance policy they don’t always know what bank has the loan. I always advise people to let me know who the bank is when they find out. They don’t always call back until they get a letter from the bank stating they need proof of insurance.
If the person disregarded the letter because they had already notified their auto insurance company, the bank may force place insurance even though they didn't need it. Meaning without your consent they added an insurance policy for you. I’m assuming Wells Fargo did a similar thing. It sounds like Wells Fargo was pretty quick to add the insurance and were not great about notifying the customers they were paying for insurance as part of their payment. So, there were a lot of people who were double insured. Some people may not have noticed the increase and paid even though they had their own insurance the entire time.
From my experience Well Fargo was one of the worst banks to deal with. One insurance company that I worked for would send a notice to Wells Fargo that stated “the insurance is continuous unless we notify you that it has cancelled”. But, that was never sufficient for Wells Fargo, they for whatever reason couldn’t put that into their system. This lead to a lot of wasted time at every renewal where we had to manually notify the bank. I had Wells Fargo’s 800 number saved because I used it so often.  It was a terrible customer experience on both ends. My customers were mad at me because they didn’t think I was doing my job. I had to explain to them how we worked. I then had to get on the phone with the bank and make sure they were straightened out. Usually, I had to fax proof over to them.
It’s an unfortunate thing that happened. This settlement will hopefully pay people back for the extra charges they incurred. I'm going on the record here asking for my cut of the money for all my wasted hours on the phone with them. Think I have a chance at getting anything? Oh, and their home insurance verification system was just as bad FYI. If you’d like to waste a few minutes to get a quote for your auto insurance give me a call at 951-395-0754

Isn't she a beauty? Thanks to www.MotoeXotica.com classic cars for the picture!

​I think that most people fondly remember their first car. My first car was a beast. It was an early 80’s Chevy Citation “club coupe”. It was white with a flashy red pinstripe down its side. The pinstripe happened to match a bright red interior.
Now this car had seen better days by the time it rolled into my hands. My dad had bought it new, drove it for a few years. It got passed onto my mom who drove it for a few years. I remember one night she came home all worked up because she got hit by a deer. My dad wasn’t buying her story, but I was there to pull some deer skin off the side mirror validating my mom’s story. The deer dent never got repaired and the car got passed onto my brother, then my sister and finally me.
Another fond memory of that car was when my dad took it to get tires. The mechanic nonchalantly mentioned that the bottom of the car was so rusted out that basically the carpet was the only thing holding people in the car.  Dad sweetly paid to get that fixed. Otherwise the rear quarter panels were mostly rust, I tapped it once with my toe and my foot went through the panel. The ceiling fabric somehow managed to remove itself from the actual roof. So, it hung down hitting my head. A nice big pin put it back in place. The radio stopped working at some point. My favorite feature however was the windshield wiper jets. For some odd reason they weren’t very well attached to the hood of the car and they would squirt off to the side. It was always a nice feature if you passed someone on the street that you didn’t like much. A few quick squirts and you had the ultimate mobile squirt gun.
Basically the only thing that worked on the car was its V6 engine that was shoved under the hood. Now when I say it worked, it mostly worked on warm days. If the weather was cold I had to go try to get the car started in the driveway before my hair froze. I would pump the gas, crank it over and try to get it to start. I would then let it run for 20 minutes otherwise it might stall out on the way to school.
I have to say that little car was still fun to drive. It would rumble down the road with a slight smell of gas. I do remember pulling into a parking lot and some people mentioned that my car smelled like gas. I guess I thought it always smelled like that. Come to find out it did have a gas leak that needed to be fixed or it might have burst into flames, who knew?
Sadly, the “white lion” as my friend nicknamed it finally stopped working. We sold it off for a few hundred bucks, I don’t even know if it was worth that in parts.
So, what kind of car is a good car for a new teenage driver? The moral to this story is any car is a great first car for your kids. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy or exciting. It’s their first car and they will always remember it no matter if it is brand new or some beat up and rusted out car. Give me a call if you’d like to compare rates on a car for your teenage driver. 951-395-0754

It has been a long time since I got my driver’s license. But, now my daughter is in the process of getting her license and it has me thinking back about what I did to get mine. I remember it being a pretty easy process.  My dad took me one morning to drive around the middle school parking lot to show me how things worked. In high school you took driver's education, I did some behind the wheel classes with a driving instructor and then I went down to take my test when I turned 16.  I took the written part first, got 100 percent and then literally drove around the block with someone at the DMV.  After passing the test and the driving exam I walked out with a flashy new drivers license.  
When I tell people my daughter is getting her permit and if they have kids who are about to drive they are quick to ask how they get their license these days. In California it’s a pretty simple process. For some reason people don't think kids can get their license at 16. They sure can, but you need to start the process early. Starting at 15 ½ they can get their permit. Now, you need to complete your online driving course hours before you go down to take the written test. You can do that at numerous driving school websites. Once you complete your online class you can pick up a certificate of completion and head down to the DMV. After finishing the test and passing you then need to have your permit signed off by a driving instructor. Once that is complete the kids need to start doing their 50 hours of driving with a parent or guardian. Six months after you get your permit you can go back to get your driver’s license. You also have the option to do a combined classroom and behind the wheel course. With that one, you register for the class, you take proof that you are registered and then you go do the written test. After that you complete the classroom work and behind the wheel hours.
How does auto insurance work for your kids once they have a permit? No matter what company you have your insurance with you will need to add your permitted driver onto the auto policy. Many companies won’t charge for your child until they actually get their license. Other companies will start charging at a certain age. You’ll want to check with your insurance company to see how they handle things. Additionally, you will probably want to shop your rates at this point. Insurance companies can charge dramatically different rates for young drivers. You will also want to see what the cost is if you add a car too. If you are thinking about buying your new driver a new car you had better get ready to pay a huge increase in your insurance. If you are putting them in an older car that has less coverage your rates will be much more reasonable.
Steps to get your license in California

1. Complete Your Drivers Course (get certificate to take with you to DMV)
2. Study for the written Driver’s test
3. Go to DMV to take the test
4. Get your permit signed by a driving school
5. Practice driving! You will need to complete a driving course with a driving school and practice with your parents for 50 hours.
6. After six months take your behind the wheel test at the DMV, pass and you are done!

Don't go out and buy your teen driver a new car until you shop the insurance rates. I have had plenty of parents that are trying to do something nice for their kids only to find out the cost of insurance is equal to the cost of the car payment. Also, don't reduce your liability limits to offset the cost of your new driver. You always want to make sure you have plenty of liability coverage, young drivers are the highest risk you can add to your insurance. It's also a good time to think about getting an umbrella policy to protect your assets too. Call me if you want to compare your rates. 951-395-0754.