Home Insurance Company said they would cancel policy b/c we had chickens..Anyone else have this happ

[Folly's place]

I've had USAA auto insurance for a long time; they're the best! They DO NOT have farm insurance, only homeowners. Unless they've changed this year, I'll have to check for myself. Go with a company that's well rated by CU. Mary

 

[mrswolf02]

My husband is a veteran and we have USAA for our auto, but they wont cover Florida policies, not even renters inusrance ( i checked for that too when we rented the house we just bought) They were the first people I checked with lol They referred us to Citizens who wanted almost $2000 :/

I did ask the people we rented/bought from who they had for insurance and will get in touch with them after I hear back from the farm bureau

marktoo, you are so right. we bought our house in september and was due to pay another quarter in december.

I also contacted our local news paper and they wanted my phone number, so hopefully they'll call me...I really want it out there how messed up this is, to give people a heads up b/c i didnt think it would be an insurance issue to have such a "vicious" animal and also to post where one can find laws/rules regarding chickens b/c i couldnt find anything when I looked up if they were legally allowed in my area since it isnt labeled as "agricultural land"

florida just sucks sucks sucks! lol i wanna move to the mountains and build a cabin and live off grid!

 

[res]

I've had USAA auto insurance for a long time; they're the best! They DO NOT have farm insurance, only homeowners. Unless they've changed this year, I'll have to check for myself. Go with a company that's well rated by CU. Mary

I think it must depend on the size of your property... We've had USAA since 1997 - and we've always had a "farm" and filed farm taxes. They are aware we have acreage/livestock. They've covered our property and rebuilt us through 2 tornados - 1999 and 2010 - and are insuring our current property that has livestock on it... Could be quite a bit different though if we had several thousand acres, employees, millions in equipment, etc.

 

[res]

https://www.usaa.com/inet/pages/insurance_farm_ranch_main

 

[Mtn Laurel]

Sorry for your circumstances. I do know that securing homeowners insurance in Florida is an entirely different situation than securing insurance in the rest of the US. Many carriers pulled out of the state entirely after Hurricane Andrew. It sounds as though the remaining carriers have very tight underwriting guidelines that makes it almost impossible to get and keep insurance if you have any situation outside of their narrow guidelines.

Once the other underwriting problems are resolved - the trees, etc. - you might want to call around to see if another company will allow chickens. With the other problems solved you'd only have the chicken situation to deal with and carriers may be more receptive.

Good luck!

 

[mrswolf02]

thanks laurel! the farm bureau is checking now to see if they themselves can cover us, otherwise i dont think there is much hope in finding someone to cover us if we have chickens but i will be tryin to look around. we have till nov. 20th to get something else, not much time but enough to hurry and well....run around like a chicken with it's head cut off lol


thanks res or for sharing that link, hopefully it will help someone else out!!

 

[Sandyd]

Call Farm Bureau Insurance

Second this for Farm Bureau. That insurance company does not want your business. Don't get rid of your girls yet. Have someone cut back your tree limbs from your roof and get another company.

 

[cafarmgirl]

Our farm policy is through Nationwide Agribusiness, our underwriters also require pictures of the property, we have and have had horses, cows, goats, chickens, never an issue.

 

[SunnySkies]

MANY insurance companies won't cover you if any animals other than a dog (depending on breed) and cats live on the property. We found out the hard way when we went to closing here...yes, closing (!)....and I called our insurance company to arrange coverage for the new place.

All was well until they found out about chickens. Their eyes bugged out when I said the horses would be on our property. And immediately dropped us! It almost made us have to postpone closing, which probably would have soured the whole sale, and then I had to scramble around to find someone to cover us.

The only one in my state...Nationwide. We had to get a farm policy because of the livestock, and yep, chickens were considered livestock. The policy is a couple thousand bucks a year.

I'm halfway afraid to call and tell them about the livestock guardian dogs....

ETA: mine also needed photos and came out to take them before we moved in (they should probably come renew them...we built fences and a barn and half dozen coops since then).

And yes, if a homeowners insurance policy finds out you have livestock and you make a claim, good luck getting them to pay. A friend has USAA and they refused to pay for some damage done by a storm to the house because she has horses in the yard they didn't know about.

 

[mrswolf02]

Nationwide is another big guy that wont cover florida