When a person purchases a new home, of course, they will need to arrange their insurance. Many times the buyer will forward the copy of the market sheet from the real estate listing and assume that is all that is needed by the insurance company. While this will provide a good bit of information, more will be needed.
The insurance company will want to know all of the details of the property. What is the area; number of bedrooms, bathroom, size of garage, type of roof and type of construction? The insurance company will do an evaluation of rebuilding value to make sure the property is correctly insured for replacement cost. They will also want to find out the ages of the latest updates, age of roof, and any electrical updates: not just recently but during the lifetime of the property. The more information that can be obtained from the seller or from your due diligence, the better. This will give your insurance company more tools to help drive the premium rate down.
Details of prior claims are helpful as well. The seller should release this information to you.
Another item that is also useful is to develop a credit score using social security numbers. This information, of course, will be based individually on the buyer. This is a type of underwriting that has been used by insurance companies for many years although an arguable point. The concepts are that a better credit score should lead to a lower number of claims, although we still have to contend with weather related claims.
