Isn't there something truly awesome about knowing every time you step out onto your front porch you're looking at a little piece of history? Living in a historical district can be like capturing a moment in time over and over again, every day of your life. The catch is, part of enjoying the serenity and the mystery of living in a historical district is doing what you can to preserve the authenticity of your own home. That's where your homeowners insurance steps in.
See, buying homeowners insurance on a historic home isn't as easy as hopping on the web, filling out a questionnaire and getting quotes from companies all over the country. Wouldn't it be nice if it was? When you're insuring a home in a historical district you're probably going to need to work with a professional that specializes in that type of thing to make sure you're preserving the sanctity of both your checkbook AND the little part of history you call home.
Why Buying Insurance in the Historic District is Such a Pain
When you're insuring your historical home it usually isn't because you don't have anything better to do with your cash. It's because you don't want to have to pay out of pocket to repair it if the antiquated wiring should suddenly combust or your septic tank finally gives up the ghost! Most of the homes in the country's authentic historic districts have a replacement cost of over $1 million, often much higher than their estimated market value, simply because it's going to cost your homeowners insurance so much to find the right kind of materials and the right craftsmen to put it back together again.
Did You Know Most Homeowners Insurance Companies Won't Insure Houses Over 100 Years Old?
Yes, it's shameless age-ism, but there you have it. No one ever said the insurance industry had to be politically correct. At least, not as far as inanimate objects go. Guess nobody ever told them that history was alive!
But seriously folks.
Because of the expense of rebuilding a historical home, especially one that's in a historic district and therefore strictly governed by the laws of historical accuracy, most homeowners insurance companies choose to pass those contracts off to insurers who specialize in "that kind of thing". These companies work almost exclusively with high value historical homes and know exactly how to give you the best deal possible on your potential rebuilding costs without sacrificing the sanctity of your home.
But First, the Inspection...
Owning a historic home is one of the very few times you can almost guarantee you're going to have an insurance agent standing on your front steps sooner or later. Why? Because the difficult part of any historical renovation isn't rebuilding the house. It's getting it right, down to the last slime covered toadstool.
The beauty of living in a historic district is that you want to be authentic, not just close to authentic. That means if you had a slate roof and it burned up in a fire you have to build another slate roof. And that slate may even need to be from the same quarry as the original. The wood is going to have to be the same type, and properly aged. And you're going to going to need to find a craftsman that knows how to work with both.
Since that all costs money your homeowners insurance is going to want a comprehensive list not only of what's in your home but also what it's made of, and they're not going to trust you to make that list. They're probably going to send out a qualified appraiser to poke around, make a list, toss around a few numbers and set the stage to give your home the top notch homeowners insurance it deserves.
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