Housing-News-Report-October-2018

HOUSINGNEWS REPORT

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Real Estate Insurance: Fending Off Disaster In A Changing World

BY PETER G. MILLER, STAFF WRITER

Many real estate consumers don’t think about insurance very much. Most assume coverage is always available, just a phone call away. Few worry that insurance won’t be there. But what if such assumptions are wrong? The real estate marketplace — and with it a big chunk of the nation’s economy — is dependent on insurance in one form or another. It’s the inter-related web of insurance and insurance-like financial structures that

keeps buyers coming back for more houses and investors demanding more mortgages. Yet the reality is that risk factors are in transition and new liabilities increasingly impact the marketplace. More and more consumers face higher insurance standards, steeper costs, fewer options and sometimes no options at all. Risks that were rare yesterday are increasingly common. Marginal properties are being washed

out of the system and with them home sales and mortgage originations.

The most visible changes — but not the only changes or arguably even the biggest changes — relate to claims from such things as floods, fires, and droughts. “Most insurance and reinsurance companies are getting smart on climate change and extreme weather

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OCT 2018 | ATTOM DATA SOLUTIONS

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