Extended Trips Away From Home Could Kill Property Insurance Coverage

In Tacoma, Washington, The News Tribune reports:

• You’re a snowbird who spends six months in the Arizona sun and six months at your home here in the South Sound. Or you’re a homeowner with a mortgage that has gone underwater, and you’ve walked away from your loan expecting to face foreclosure. You’ve got homeowner’s insurance, and you think you’re covered.
• Well, maybe not. Karl Newman, president of the Northwest Insurance Council, said this week that homeowners who fail to occupy their homes for 30 days or more could face “significant insurance implications and serious financial risk.” Some policies, he said, “exclude losses caused by abandonment of a home or neglect when the home is left unoccupied for a specified number of consecutive days.”
• Only recently – especially with an increase of foreclosures – has this facet of coverage become widely known, he said.
• “As long as people continue to own that home, they have liability,” Newman said. “We’re sounding the alarm. People may be without coverage and not know it. This could be a problem for people. We just don’t want them to be unaware.”

For more, see Little-known insurance clause can mean liability when leaving home.