Maureen O’Connor knows what it feels like to have her home insurance non-renewed not once but twice. The first time she managed to get it reinstated, but the premium rose nearly 60%. The second time the insurer notified her that she would be non-renewed, her agent did not follow through by uploading documents the company was requiring of Maureen to keep the insurance.
So, Farmers dumped her permanently.
Maureen is a retired registered nurse who lives in Sunland, a little rural town in the San Fernando Valley. There, she has owned a 1,600-foot Cape Cod style house built in 1933 for four decades. She’s got a guest house, and a barn on the property where she keeps two horses. In front, she’s got a kidney-shaped pool and pool shed. More than a decade ago, she switched from Allstate to Farmers where she liked the service better.
The Farmers premium started out around $1,000 a year and crept up to $2,164 in 2020 and from there reached nearly $2,700 in 2022. Then in 2023, she got a letter from Farmers informing her that they were cancelling her policy because of “clutter.” She called her agent. “I said, how are they seeing that? I was told it was by satellite. Those are metal posts and metal roofs for horse corrals behind my barn. They are not flammable, and they are stacked up against each other. What they called clutter was metal structures for covering my horses if I needed more shelters.”
She had her broker explain to Farmers what the “clutter’ was and that it wasn’t a fire hazard. Just to be totally sure that nothing else could get in the way of reinstatement, she got the trees that are well away from her house trimmed. “I decided to make this place look as good as possible to protect myself,” she said. “I spent between $2,000 and $4,000. I really went through a cleanup because I didn’t know what they were identifying as clutter.”
But that wasn’t all. They also wanted pictures of Maureen’s whole property. Maureen sent 40 of them covering every square inch.
“They said we see clutter in the patio next to your house,” said Maureen. The company had identified toy horses, which Maureen confirmed. “They said you have to get rid of that, so that I threw out a lot of two-foot kids’ horses and rearranged them around the pool and I sent in more pictures. Then my agent was telling me don’t worry I can write you up for the FAIR Plan, but they are doing this to everybody. Let’s wait, they will reinstate you.”
The good news was that Farmers did reinstate her. The bad news was that the premium went from $2,700 to $4,600.
But Maureen’s story didn’t end there. In August 2024, Farmers sent her a letter telling her that they were re-evaluating renewing her home insurance policy that expires in mid-December 2024. The letter said they needed more information, she was to fill out an enclosed document, sign and return it by September 3, 2024, or face nonrenewal. The document was filled with yes and no check boxes on pre-existing damage in the house, whether the property contained debris. Farmers also required another set of pictures of the property.
Maureen sent the pictures in as soon as she took them. She signed and dated the document and drove it to her agent’s office on August 30, 2024. It was Labor Day weekend, and her agent was out but Maureen delivered the document to her secretary personally so that the document could be uploaded to Farmers on Tuesday, September 3.
“The next thing I got was a letter dated 9-11 from Farmers saying I was cancelled,” said Maureen. “We are unable to continue coverage on your policy because we did not receive required information to underwrite or rate your policy,” the letter said. Maureen called her agent who told Maureen that she never turned it in. “She had a couple of excuses…well, I was off for that weekend, and then she finally said I never turned it in because they are going to cancel you anyway.”
“She did say, yeah, she can write me for CA FAIR Plan and my insurance rates will probably increase. I will also need a second policy for all the things that the FAIR Plan does not cover. She said home insurance companies are coming up with all sorts of new requirements. They are asking for brand new vent covers. I said, well can I find out about that too because I would be interested in doing those things if it means I can get insurance, and it will protect my house from burning down. She said next year, they are just going to keep coming up with new requirements.”
Now, Maureen is looking for a different agent and researching other options, including the CA FAIR Plan. She is open to taking steps to harden her home against fire to obtain discounts on a policy.
“Your insurance company certainly is not your friend. I thought my agent was my representative and I don’t feel she is if she never even handed the paperwork into the company. I need to have insurance of some sort. This is going to cripple a lot of senior citizens. You have a home for thirty years and pay it off as soon as you can and have some security. But at the rate the insurance premiums are going up you may not have any savings left.”
