At what damage amount should I pursue a homeowner's insurance claim?
Some builders -- if given the first chance to deal with the problem, instead of being presented with a bill after the fact -- will fix the problem at no charge to the homeowner.  Good faith matters. My house was built by such a builder.  If I have a problem that I am competent enough to diagnose and fix, I fix it myself, at my cost.  If I have a problem that that I cannot diagnose and fix myself, but that I think the builder (or his subcontractor) is competent enough to diagnose and/or fix, I contact the builder (or subcontractor directly).  I am willing to pay for the diagnosis and/or fix, especially if it is an aging or wear-and-tear issue, or the logical consequence of a cost-saving measure that I voluntarily chose when the house was being designed. If the problem is a plumbing problem, I contact my preferred plumber for a diagnosis and/or repair.  I pay for my preferred plumber's work.  On two occasions, my preferred plumber was unable to fix the problem.  Both problems turned out to be installation (or testing) errors related to work done specifically for building inspections.  In both cases, I paid for my preferred plumber's diagnosis, and the builder (and/or his subcontractor) fixed the problem at no additional cost to me. The diagnosis and repair work that you describe seems like a similar situation to me.  (In fact, I had my builder's subcontractor replace a few prematurely damaged shingles on my roof.  This repair prevented a roof leak.  I noticed the problem while trimming a tree back from the roof.  The shingles were damaged because the building permit implied that the tree could not be trimmed back.  I'm spotting a pattern with these problems…) In my opinion, the alleged problem with the roof pitch seems like a design flaw that should have been obvious at the time you chose the house design.  I expect that any corrections of this design flaw will need to come out of your remodelling budget.  In the absence of further details, I doubt that either the builder or the homeowners' insurance company is responsible for it. Some builders make a point of minimizing the warranty work they pay for, regardless of its effect on the builder's reputation.  I do not know which kind of builder you have. The lawyer has probably told you whether the relevant statutes of limitations have lapsed.  (The statutes of limitations vary from state-to-state, and vary depending on the alleged tort.)  Starting a lawsuit is likely to further damage your relationship with your builder. Homeowners' insurance companies now share the number of claims that have been made historically at each property address.  Most insurance companies now use this cumulative number of claims when setting rates, even if the claim(s) were made against a different insurance company, or by a different homeowner.  I do not know whether any insurance companies ignore claims older than a certain number of years, or ignore the first claim.
The key question is whether this number includes taxes and insurance. When you get a mortgage in the U.S., the bank wants to be sure that you are paying your property taxes and that you have homeowners insurance. The mortgage is guaranteed by a lien on the house -- if you don't pay, the bank can take your house -- and the bank doesn't want to find out that your house burned down and you didn't bother to get insurance so now they have nothing. So for most mortgages, the bank collects money from the borrower for the taxes and insurance, and then they pay these things. This can also be convenient for the borrower as you are then paying a fixed amount every month rather than being hit with sizeable tax and insurance bills two or three times a year. So to run the numbers: As others point out, mortgage rates in the US today are running 3% to 4%. I just found something that said the average rate today is 3.6%. At that rate, your actual mortgage payment should be about $1,364. Say $1,400 as we're taking approximate numbers. So if the $2,000 per month does NOT include taxes and insurance, it's a bad deal. If it does, then not so bad. You don't say where you live. But in my home town, property taxes on a $300,000 house would be about $4,500 per year. Insurance is probably another $1000 a year. And if you have to get PMI, add another 1/2% to 3/4%, or $1500 to $2250 per year. Add those up and divide by 12 and you get about $600. Note my numbers here are all highly approximate, will vary widely depending on where the house is, so this is just a general ballpark. $1400 + $600 = $2000, just what you were quoted. So if the number is PITI -- principle, interest, taxes, and insurance -- it's about what I'd expect. This shows the impact of the inquiries. It's from Credit Karma, and reflects my inquiries over the past two years. In my case, I refinanced 2 properties and the hit is after this fact, so my score at 766 is lower than when approved. You can go to Credit Karma and see how your score was impacted. If in fact the first inquiry did this, you have cause for action. In court, you get more attention by having sufficient specific data to support your claim, including your exact damages. "I've never heard of rent quoted per week. Are you in the US?  In general, after the down payment, one would hope to take the rent, and be able to pay the mortgage, tax, insurance, and then have enough left each year to at least have a bit of emergency money for repairs. If one can start by actually pocketing more than this each year, that's ideal, but to start with a rental, and only make money ""after taxes"" is cutting it too close in my opinion. The 19 to 1 ""P/E"" appears too high, when I followed such things I recall 12 or under being the target. Of course rates were higher, and that number rises with very low rates.  In your example, a $320K mortgage at 4% is $1527/mo. $400/wk does not cut it." "This article has a section titled ""Do you need an umbrella policy to cover your personal liability risks?"" that says: If you have young children, for example, you might need a policy   because they have lots of friends. These little tikes might get into   some mischief and hurt themselves at your home. If so, you’re at risk   of being sued. Do you have people over often? Do you drive like a maniac or a   Parisian? Do you have firearms on your premises? Do you have gardeners   and housekeepers on the grounds? All these are reasons why you might   want to own an umbrella policy. Although many people in the US are homeowners, parents, drivers, etc., not everyone falls into these categories. For some people, as low as the premiums for such a policy might be,  the expected cost outweighs the expected benefit. The cost of a lawsuit may be extremely high, but someone may feel that the chance of a lawsuit being filed against them is low enough to be safely ignored and not worth insuring against. I'm probably not a great example, but I'll use my own situation anyway. Even though a liability policy probably wouldn't cost me too much, I'm almost certain that I wouldn't derive any benefit from it. I live alone without children (or firearms, pet tigers, gardeners, etc.) in a 520 sq. ft. apartment, so the probability that something bad would happen to someone on the small bit of property that I rent and that they would file a sizable lawsuit against me is small enough that I choose to ignore it." There are several aspects to this but at a high level it boils down to A lot goes in to insurance rating and risk projecting.  You can't adjust a single variable and expect a proportional change in your premium, 7,000 miles per year just won't be 70% of the cost of 10,000 miles per year, because there are a lot of other things in play as well.  To further address premium adjustments.  Consider this: Even if your liability coverage did scale with perfect correlation to your mileage (using the same 70% from above, 7,000 miles per year versus 10,000 miles per year) then your premium composition is: $200 to $170 is 15%.  No change will have a direct linear correlation to your total premium because there are different component pieces of the total premium.  Fixed costs may be built in to the amounts for other component pieces of the premium, for example maybe no line of coverage ever has a cost below $X. Obviously these numbers are all made up Additionally, and also less considered is the fact that your liability also scales because of a lot of factors that have nothing to do with you.  It might be the other cars that are on the road, it might be that more densely populated areas have more fender benders.  For example if you live in Beverly Hills you have a much higher likelihood of accidentally bumping a $70-$80-$90-$100k+ car than you do in say, rural Wisconsin.  If your zip code is gentrifying and everyone starts buying Mercedes, your liability coverage increases.   You can not adjust one single variable and decide that you are lower risk than all insurers think you are.  If you shop this coverage and all insurers are within a nominal margin of pricing for the same coverage levels, there isn't much to argue with; you are simply riskier than you think you are and the variable you are focused on is not as meaningful as you think it is. There are two scenarios that I see. You have a mortgage on the property. Generally the insurance company sends the funds to the lender, who then releases the funds to you  as you make the repairs. They do it this way because if you never make the repairs the value of the collateral is decreased, and the lender wants to protect their investment. There is no mortgage. You will get the funds directly, and the insurance company will not force you to make the repairs especially if the repairs are cosmetic in nature.  In either case if you don't fix the cause of the leak, and make repairs to the site around the leak, you will run into a problem in the future if the leak continues, or the rot and mold continues to spread.  If you file a future claim they are likely to ask for proof of the original repair. If you didn't make it, they are likely to deny the second claim. They will say the cause is the original incident and if you had made the repair, the second incident wouldn't have happened. They are likely to drop you at that point. If you try to sell the house you will have to disclose the original leak, and the potential buyers will want you to make the repairs. Any mold or rot spotted by the home inspector will be a big issue for them. It is also likely to be an item that they will be advised to demand that you get a legitimate company to make the repair before the deal can move forward, and won't negotiate a lower price or a credit for $x so they can get the repair done. Some will just cancel the deal based on the inspection report. "You're asking for opinions here, because it's a matter of how you look at it. I'll give it a shot anyway. For insurance purposes - there's a clear answer: you insure based on how much it would cost you to replace it. For some reason, you're considering as a possibility negotiating with the insurance company about that, but I've never heard of insuring something at a ""possible sales value"" unless you're talking about a one of a kind thing, or a particularly valuable artifact: art, jewelry, etc. That it would be appraised and insured based on the appraised value. Besides, most of the stuff usually loses value once you bought it, not gains, so insuring per replacement costs makes more sense because it costs more. As to your estimations of your own net worth to yourself - its up to you. I would say that something only worth what people would pay for it. So if you have a car that you just bought brand new, replacing it would cost you $X, but you can only sell it for $X-10%, because it depreciated by at least 10% once you've driven it off the dealer's lot. So I would estimate your worth as $X-10% based on the car, not $X, because although you spent $X on it - you can never recover it if you sell it, so you can't claim to have it as your ""net worth""." "Your best option right now is to get a lawyer, file suit against your insurance for the full amount (total shown on the collections from the provider, without discounts) plus ""damages"".  Include in the damages the cost of your lawyer, time spent resolving this, and any other expenses you have incurred thus far in dealing with this.  Your lawyer will be able to give you guidance here.  I think you'll find that the insurance company changes their tune once they are served papers." Be prepared to drive another 500 km to prove your claim. If you file your claims, normally you should claim interest at the bank rate on savings bank accounts. However, in most such situations, the rate is specified in the law. If not, your claim will not be entertained in a normal way. You may to file a suit for recovery of interest. Keep us posted on your progress. And he has to pay for it every home repair and every month the property sets empty.  His loss each month is not $250, but probably closer to $500.  In generally you need to clear at least $200 ABOVE PTI (principle, taxes and interest) to cover repair and the like to property. From your post, it sounds like your dad was forced into the land-lord business by the recession.  Unless he plans to hold the property until its rental value has increased by $500 a month, he should consider selling it and writing-off the loss.  Losing money bit by bit on a house isn't a tax write-off event.  Selling a property for less than you bought it for generally is. FYI, I got the $500/month loss by assuming that repairs/emptiness/etc will cost you about $200 a month, and added $50 for your dad's time managing the property. "I decline politely.   The cost of the insurance policy has two components: The actual cost of a likely repair + profit. If I set aside the cost of a likely repair myself, then I get to keep the profit.   If the item doesn't break, I get to keep the ""repair"" money too :)" Another vote for a bigger downpayment, for the reasons Benjamin mentions. Also, from experience, I would save up at least a small pile as a separate house emergency fund because you will find things that are wrong and/or that got bodged by the previous owner and it's probably not going to last past the first few months of home ownership. In my case, the home inspector missed - amongst other things - that the shower on the 2nd floor was leaking both into the adjoining bedroom and the living room below. That added a little unexpected expenditure as you might guess. Yes. As a general case, insurance proceeds are repaying you for the damage that you have already incurred, not specifically for fixing anything.  Since you have the legal right to sell the house as-is, without fixing it up at all, then you have the legal right to spend the insurance proceeds how you see fit. You can upgrade, downgrade, alter or replace your deck in any reasonable way... or do nothing.    You should call your agent and make sure that there is nothing unusual in your policy, but this kind of homeowner decision - what materials or methods to fix damage to a home... is very normal and unremarkable, so your agent will probably reassure you and end the conversation without a second's thought. I believe your statement is mostly correct:  ...all the expert recommendations are based on an inflexible conventional wisdom that presumes that all renters are relatively resource-poor. When you purchase a $50 electronic item at the store and are offered an extended warranty for $3, most people turn it down, not only because they don't think it's worth it, but also because in the event that the item fails between say years 1 and 3, they don't worry enough about that $50 to care if they have to buy a new one, or live without it. The percentage of your net worth also matters. For example, if you had an entire loss tomorrow, you'd be out $20K if you needed to re-purchase your possessions. (30K minus 10K in current coverage.) $20K is approximately 1/44 or 2.3% of your net worth. If a catastrophe occurs and you only lose 2.3% of your net worth, some might consider that lucky, so from that point of view it isn't really a big deal. But on the flip side, if the extra insurance only costs you $50 more per year, you may not even notice that dent in your net worth either. I think for most people, the value of items in their home may be their net worth, or at least a much larger percentage of it, in which case the insurance makes more sense. For someone in your position, it probably doesn't make much difference either way. If you had $300K in valuables in your house, perhaps your point of view would be different. Ben Miller offers you sounds advice. However, if it comes down to it I would reach out to a lawyer to negotiate this for you. If what you are presenting is true then you could easily sue them for the damages incurred. I have been in a similar situation and unfortunately using the lawyers is what was required to get the solution resolved. Based on my previous experience a simple letter from a local lawyer office would get this dropped pretty quick and should cost you around $150. Best of luck!