Harvey’s aftermath: Flood insurers leaving high-end homeowners under water
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As Houston area homeowners begin to assess the damage to their homes and file insurance claims, some, particularly in high-end homes, are finding their flood insurance coverage is vastly inadequate. |
Michael Barry of the Insurance Information Institute said Tuesday there was likely a communications breakdown in which homeowners were probably not informed about, “the private sector offering excess flood insurance coverage.”
“This is coverage that would kick in after the FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program policy limits were met,” Barry told Neil Cavuto on “Cavuto: Coast to Coast.”
According to Barry, FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program “caps the coverage for dwelling damage to $250,000 per home, $100,000 per home’s contents.”
Barry suggested homeowners do their due diligence in making sure they have sufficient flood insurance coverage.
“For higher-end homes in flood-prone areas, their insurance professional with whom they were dealing with should have spoken with them, or to the homeowners themselves should have looked into, ‘well, is this FEMA National Flood Insurance Program policy going to cover me in the event of a total loss.”
On Monday, one Houston resident, who lost her home due to the catastrophic flooding that followed the hurricane, described her experience during an interview on “Cavuto: Coast to Coast.”
“We were just told last night, just to add more to our troubles, that the money that we should get is less than a quarter of even the value of our home,” Lisa Wald Lundquist said.