Posted Thursday, December 28th, 2023 by Enterprise Property Management
Insider Tips: Navigating Insurance for Real Estate Success. Discover the nuances of real estate insurance with Trey, a seasoned State Farm agent. From navigating replacement costs to the importance of deductibles, Trey shares valuable insights for investors. Learn about policy endorsements and the impact of endorsements on premiums. Trey emphasizes the importance of regular policy reviews to ensure proper coverage. Gain actionable advice on managing risks, choosing coverage wisely, and navigating claims efficiently. Elevate your real estate journey with Trey’s expertise—your key to securing successful and worry-free property investments.
Richard
0:00:19 – Welcome back to another episode of Behind the Curtain Podcast. Here with me today is Aaron Ivey and on the line we have Trey Clemens from State Farm.
Trey
0:00:28 – Yes, how are you?
Aaron
0:00:29 – This is Trey Clemens. I’ve known him, full disclosure, known him for a while. He started with State Farm how many years ago?
Trey
0:00:37 – So I’ve been with State Farm for 12 and a half years now. I worked for an agent for about six years and then we’ve opened up our own agency about six years ago and opened up a second location in May of this year. So we’ve got two locations now.
Aaron
0:00:51 – That is the mark of a very successful career. Trey, I think that’s incredible. And also for the listener, Trey and I try to work together whenever we can. I like Trey a lot. I respect his opinion and his insight and his experience in insurance. And as a company, Enterprise Property Management recommends Trey both to investors that are looking for insurance, obviously to any normal homeowner that needs homeowner’s insurance, but also to our tenants to consider using Trey for bundling auto and renter’s insurance, which is a necessary function of being a tenant. So Trey’s done a lot of work with our community for the last 12 years and I intend to work with him for the next 20. Not that there’s something important about 20 years, but you know, for a long time.
Trey
0:01:36 – No, that’s great. I would, that would be wonderful. I hope I’m around for another 30, 35. Obviously, you’re a little older than me and your family has been great. Your mom was my fourth grade teacher and my principal and I only got sent there once. So that’s probably a story for another day. But no, I appreciate our relationship and definitely appreciate you guys having me.
Aaron
0:01:57 – For the listener, I’m no stranger to the principal’s office. I’ve spent half of my elementary school years in the principal’s office and probably more than that when I was in high school. So yeah, we’ve got great family relationships. So our relationship’s been a blessing. And what we try to do on the Behind the Curtain podcast is share that relationship that we have personally and professionally because at Enterprise, we surround ourselves with professionals that can work with and be a blessing to and benefit our customer base. And so you have a huge role with our homeowners because you’re recommending insurance coverages and types of policies which will benefit and protect them. But I know too that you’re also very conscientious about the level of coverage that they have. I know that you are very interested in making sure that people have honestly, in my opinion at least, and maybe you can correct me, a little more coverage than they think that they will need. Like you want to make sure that there’s no gap. So I feel like you’re the perfect person for this conversation to talk about how homeowner’s insurance is a little different for investors than it is for the typical homeowner. And I was wondering if you could maybe share a little bit of insight on that.
Trey
0:03:05 – Yeah, absolutely. Most people are going to value their personal home, at least the experience that I have had dealing with investors, they’re going to value their personal home a little bit more than maybe an investment property. And so I’ve dealt with a wide range of investors. And so we’ve got some who prefer having the proper coverage in place. Every market is a little different. We’ve got some homes that you could probably purchase for $50,000 and the replacement cost comes back at $150,000 or $200,000. And they don’t really care about replacement costs because if something happens to it, then they just kind of view it as a loss on their end. But most of the people that we work with, they want the proper coverage in place. And we’ve got certain tools and resources that we utilize to determine that number and kind of coaching through that process. But probably the biggest difference is your personal property. The dwelling coverage is pretty much the same. Homeowners, you’re covering for replacement costs on your actual home. Investment properties have, we call them rental dwelling policies, so RDP. So on an RDP, we have dwelling coverage that’s going to be the replacement costs for just similar as the home. Personal property, you’re going to have a lot more personal property on the homeowner side, whereas most investors don’t have very much of any of their own personal property, whether it be appliances or property that they’re supplying to the renter that is owned by the investor. So personal property is probably where you see the biggest difference in coverage, but both carry liability. Your liability is probably a little bit more on the investment side as well. And we can get into that here shortly. But I would say personal property is your biggest difference on just kind of a brief overview between the home versus a rental policy.
Aaron
0:04:55 – That actually makes a lot of sense. So what’s interesting in our line of work is when the economy dips like it’s dipping right now and people don’t feel comfortable selling their homes because interest rates are high or they don’t want to go through the complications of selling their home in a down economy or a down market, which, you know, it’s 2023, the end of 2023, headed into 2024, we’re in that sort of marketplace right now. Those homeowners will call me and they want me to educate them on converting their home into a rental dwelling. And so they often ask me, you know, like what are the changes I need to make? What are the safeguards I need to put in place? And how does this affect me moving forward? And they never think of insurance. And so I always bring it up and I say listen your policy is going to change and your personal property like you said it’s it’s no longer going to be covered because you’re moving that personal property to your next dwelling so now we have your home which we have to recognize as an investment property or a second home that you are renting your insurance needs to change and you need to start thinking about liability one of the things that I’ve really appreciated from you Trey is that you’re a big believer in the umbrella policy. I keep hearing the number five million in coverage over and over again as a new standard for a personal liability umbrella. Can you explain how that works with State Farm?
Trey
0:06:14 – Yeah, absolutely. So one thing I’ll just start off from the beginning, there is a difference between a personal umbrella policy and then a commercial umbrella policy. And so at least with our company and our office, we are able to cover a limited number of rental properties under your personal with four. So, we can handle four rental properties under your personal umbrella. So, the way that would work is, let’s just say under your traditional homeowner policy, you have, let’s just say $300,000 in liability. So, if something happens on property, someone slips, trips or falls, and they sue you, they come after you, come after your assets, you’ve got $300,000 under your liability, under the homeowner policy. Now, let’s say something wild happens and somebody has to go to the hospital and it’s half a million dollars, well, the homeowners is only covering $300,000. The umbrella, let’s say somebody has a $1 million umbrella, million dollar umbrella would then kick in. So, you would exhaust your underlying liability limits, the $300,000 under the homeowner policy, and then the other $200,000 difference on that $500,000 claim would be absorbed by the million. So in essence, you’ve got $1.3 million in total liability, $300,000 through the house, $1 million through the umbrella. Some of these investors that are just getting started, then they have two or three or four. Once you get above that limit, then we would have to shift those rental properties over to a commercial liability umbrella. And on the commercial side, we’re able to handle a lot more properties. And so that’s just for whether it’s a business owner, whether it’s a property manager or an investor who has multiple properties, then we highly recommend because if you’re getting up there to where you’re relying on a lot of that income, and you’re kind of building that portfolio and your assets continue to increase, we want to make sure through that umbrella policy that we’re matching that liability limit with what you have to lose. So if you start building up a $2-3 million portfolio, then a $2-3-5 million, as you mentioned, might be a good way to protect those assets. And so if something does happen on property, you do have coverage through the actual rental policy, but then you have that umbrella policy to kind of blanket over all the properties if something were to happen.
Richard
0:08:29 – I was just curious whether you could walk us through your process when dealing with a new investor and how you determine what value they need to insure for and what level of coverage they might need, and talk a little bit about replacement cost versus actual cash value.
Trey
0:08:47 – Yes, absolutely. So it really depends on who I’m talking to. Like I said, I’ve been with State Farm for a while. I worked for an agent for a few years. That agent had a relationship with a property management company and so we got some referrals and so we would deal with investors here in the Memphis market. We’re dealing with people over in Texas, California, New York. So we’ll get some people that are looking at this market a nd so each person is different. We get some people that, like I said earlier, they may be just starting out and just getting a couple. And then I’ve got one buddy in town who I believe has about 108 rental properties insured for one investor. So it’s a wide range. So it just kind of depends on who you’re talking to and kind of what’s important to them. We want to obviously not give something to somebody that they don’t need, but it’s obviously important just like on the financial piece, you want to get to know somebody before you start making suggestions. It’s the same concept, but as far as replacement costs, State Farm is 100% replacement cost. What that means is, if you compare it to actual cash value, let’s say roofs are probably a hot topic. Let’s say you have a property that has a 20-year-old roof. Something happens to the roof to where we’re going to need to replace it through insurance. Some insurance companies out there will have the roof at actual cash value. They say, this is a 20-year-old roof, we’re only going to give you $500. Replacement cost would 100 percent cover that. If that roof is actually $18,000 to replace, then we’re going to cover the $18,000 and not the $500 based off of actual cash value. That’s where we see the value in replacement cost and that’s one thing that I would tell any investor is it matters what company you’re with because you want to make sure that you’ve got replacement costs and not actual cash value because a lot of times we’ll get some comparison quotes and policies that maybe somebody’s looking to switch and we start realizing, hey there’s a reason that your policy is a little bit cheaper because you’re getting what you’re paying for and that’s the actual cash value.
Richard
0:10:51 – What’s some advice that you can give to me assomeone who doesn’t know what should be important to me when buying an insurance policy?
Trey
0:11:00 – I think you got to look at the risk tolerance like I was saying and you guys know this probably better than I do. I’m assuming Memphis, I know at one point Memphis was one of the top rental markets in the country, I’m assuming it still is. You know it just kind of depends what the risk tolerance properties for cheap and not really concerned about some of the replacement costs and we can kind of play with that a little bit if we need to. Probably the other big thing that we haven’t really talked about yet is our deductibles. It’s the same thing explained on a homeowner’s versus a rental policy is we’ve got some investors that are okay having a higher deductible just because the higher deductible lower the price, lower deductible higher the price. And so some people are comfortable with having a lower deductible and knowing exactly what they’re gonna be out of pocket if something happens to that home or that property. And then we’ve got some people that are willing to pay a little bit higher deductible and save money each month because their hope is they’re gonna be paying their premiums more often than they’re gonna be paying the deductible. And so they’re okay having a little bit higher deductible if something were to happen, then they can kind of come up with it. Or in some cases, not really care and kind of self-insure. So those are kind of some of the questions that I ask, it’s kind of figuring out, hey, what kind of mindset do they have as far as the investing side and coverage side along with the deductibles. Hopefully, that kind of helps answer that question.
Aaron
0:12:23 – Which leads me to a follow-up question, Trey, and I think that was an excellent description of how deductibles work. You had briefly touched on self-insuring, and so for all of our listeners out there, I want you to know that, and Trey will probably agree with me, in order to be able to self-insure, this is a level of liquid wealth that you have to have at your disposal that is extremely high. It’s higher than what most people will ever achieve in their lives in my experience I’ve had a couple of investors probably ten over the years and guys I’ve managed for thousands of investors over my 22 years in this business so ten of those thousands self-insured and It’s challenging for us as property managers because we want you to have an insurance policy because insurance policies policies do you have the capacity to protect you legally without having to hire an attorney outside of the claim. You know, like if you file the claim and there is liability that’s implied or there is personal injury or somebody’s lost personal property, let’s say a tenant lost personal property and they’re suing you for any reason and I’ve experienced this myself with State Farm. State Farm has got a legal team that steps in and represents you. They assess the case. These are insurance focused, pretty much a hundred percent of the time insurance claim focused attorneys. So they’ve got a lot of experience in understanding how these cases go. They know how to interact with the insurance company. That is crucial. When you have an attorney that’s representing you outside of a claim, they don’t know State Farm as well as State Farm knows State Farm, for instance, right? So having that insurance policy even for the wealthy is important. And between you and me, Trey, I would never advise anybody to self-insure even if they’re worth $30 million. I just feel like you got to have a policy. So many ways to get lost in the details of self-insuring, whereas I could just call you and get a great policy with somebody that I trust and not have to worry about it. I want to be able to sleep at night and insurance is the number one way to provide me as a property manager and as an investor less stress, less worry because I know we’ve got it covered. I know you’ve got it covered. So I would encourage every investor to read about self-insurance, dream about it, but buy a policy please. There’s no reason to be reckless with your investments.
Trey
0:14:46 – Yeah, I agree.
Richard
0:14:48 – In honing in on what is comfortablefor me, what are some policy exclusions and how can I use supplementary insurance to find the premium that is going to be right for my budget?
Trey
0:14:58 – That’s what I was going to say is in a lot of cases, some of the wealthiest people I know still have coverage and still have umbrellas whether it’s a five million or ten million or two million dollar umbrella like they still have coverage. So I would definitely agree with everything that you just said. I do think there is some value also, and we haven’t talked about this, but why do investors purchase property to build wealth and to generate passive income or additional income? Loss of rent is probably one of the most important to your investors because that’s another big difference a claim that makes the house uninhabitable, well, it’s not really bothering you at your own home, but what it’s bothering you is messing up your ability to go make money each month through your property. So, loss of rent is something that’s super important to look at when you’re looking at a policy as well. At least for us, we’re going to do actual loss of things. So I would assume that from a property management standpoint, everybody’s going to have some type of lease agreement in place. And so if we’re getting $1,500 a month through our property and the house becomes uninhabitable, then we will present that. If that house is uninhabitable for four months, then we’re going to pay out $6,000 because that’s going to be loss of income to you as an investor. So that’s something else to think about. But going back to what you said earlier, most of these policies you’re going to be around a thousand or less a year for these rental properties. So there’s going to be a lot of opportunities even if you’re looking to self-insure it’s well worth it to have a policy in place.
Richard
0:16:39 – What kind of endorsements or riders can be taken into consideration in order to get that premium to where somebody wants it to be they need for their particular property?
Trey
0:16:52 – Again it kind of depends on where you are. Each state has their own insurance commissioner and has their own coverage and so being in Tennessee you know we don’t have a ton of outside of your storms, we’re not going to have a huge risk, we’re not a coastal state and things like that. So each state is a little different, each policy is a little different and so at least for earthquake endorsement. We are technically on the fault line. And so there is a potential risk for that. Obviously, the earthquake is an additional endorsement. So anytime you add an endorsement, then you are looking to increase your premium as well. So again, going back to kind of the risk tolerance of the investor we’re working with, hey, is this something that’s important to you? Some people it is, some people it’s not. And so that’s one. Another one that would be pretty interesting, again, going back to kind of how they want to set up that coverage, making sure we have them properly covered is we have an endorsement that will provide additional replacement costs. So for example, let’s say we have a house insured for $200,000, then we could add a 10 percent extra dwelling replacement cost on endorsement on there to where if something wild happens and the house burns to the ground, they’re rebuilding and 200,000, not a lot, they’ll get an extra 10 percent, so an extra 20,000 would go towards that rebuild. Those are probably the two endorsements that we see the most of. But ultimately, there’s several endorsements and each state has their own endorsements that you can you know I would highly recommend it kind of it can be one of the shopping those to talk to your agent about what those endorsements are and maybe how they could benefit them.
Aaron
0:18:36 – I love two things that you just said and the second thing that I loved was what you just finished with which is talk to your agent. In this internet era in the era of WebMD and self-diagnosis and everybody seems to be able to figure everything out and be an expert in everything. This is one of the situations where if you own out-of-state investment property, you need to be talking to the out-of-state insurance broker that you’re working with. If you own property in Tennessee and you live in California, you need to be talking to Trey because that insight that Trey has from being here within driving distance of your property is really crucial. Everything that you said about every state having different rules and regulations and norms for everybody that’s looking to invest in Memphis, Tennessee, if you don’t live in Tennessee, you need an agent in Tennessee. I mean, it’s just as easy as that.
Trey
0:19:28 – And I’m sorry if I can jump in here real quick. That’s kind of a pet peeve of mine, if I’m being honest with you, is there’s so many insurance companies out there now that are all 800 numbers or online where you can bind coverage on your own, I would strongly recommend to unless you have an insurance license and you are familiar with what you are doing, I would recommend you never bind insurance online or without talking with somebody because again, there’s so many scenarios and circumstances that can dictate premium and so many people look at the bottom line and they see, hey, I can get this for $40 a month. And like I said earlier about actual cash value, if you’re getting it for cheap, there’s probably a reason and we can help you kind of navigate that. But that kind of leads me to one thing. And then it does matter who your agent is. Obviously, I’m with State Farm. I want people to be with State Farm, but I also think it matters who your agent is. And what I mean by that is I’ve got relationships with contractors that will allow me to get them out there free of charge. So let’s say, Aaron, you have a property here in Memphis, you have a busted pipe and that busted pipe is causing some damage. I can get one of our contractors out there free of charge. They can give me an estimate. Let’s just say you have a $2,000 deductible. That contractor can go out there and say, hey, here’s the damage. We got to clean this we got to drive this We got to repair this it’s going to be 10 grand Well what we can actually do in our office is if Aaron if you’re good with my contractor Then I can actually have the contractor bill you your deductible for the two thousand So you’re paying the contractor your deductible and then let the contractor get to work, put together everything back in place. Then once everything is finished and complete, hopefully, we need a balance due of 8,000 and I will cut that out of the office. All through that, we never once dealt with the corporate side of our insurance company. We didn’t deal with an adjuster. There are certain things that I can do out of the office that not other insurance companies can do. So just some things to think about as far as who your agent is, how involved they are and how they can help you to move through claims a lot faster and more efficient.
Richard
0:21:48 – That was going to be our last point of talking about claims and your process for claims. Do you have any funny, interesting anecdotes of claims that you’ve done to give us some insight as to how your process works?
Trey
0:22:01 – Yeah, we’ve just finished two roofs you know we were it was more damaged roof it was something that was more repairable than replacing I think they were both probably around six grand in repairs plus they’re deductible so you know being in Memphis you get to deal with a lot of claims we’ve dealt with a lot of vandalism so if you’ve got a tenant that’s moving out or being evicted and causes a bunch of damage we’ve had to deal Probably one of the wildest ones is we’ve had bullet holes in the front of a house before that we’ve had to fix. The good thing about my job, one of the reasons I do what I do is kind of being there for people in a time of need. And that could be as simple as someone’s first accident. It could be someone dealing with a claim like one of the claims I just mentioned or even having a spouse pass away unexpectedly on the life insurance side. So there’s a lot of things that we do, but being able to kind of walk people through it and seeing some of the things that we’re able to help people with, to me, that’s kind of where I get kind of my hit of dopamine, if you will, of being able to be there when people need us most. And especially on the claims side, I’ve heard too many stories of other companies struggling on paying out. I’ve got one of my contractors stopped working with another company, it was so bad dealing with their claims department. So again I think it doesn’t matter who your agent is but it also matters the company they represent.
Richard
0:23:26 – So if somebody wants to get hold of you, what’s the best contact details to use?
Trey
0:23:30 – Yes, so we’ve got two offices, we’re in the Memphis metro area so our original office is in Bartlett, Tennessee and phone number there is 901-755-4172 and then our Lakeland office, again another suburb of Memphis, is 901-755-5657 or you can find us online at heytrey.com.
Aaron
0:24:00 – Trey, as we’re wrapping up, I’ve got two questions I waented to ask to make sure that the listeners could hear your response to two very real questions that I have as an investor. The first question is, on this podcast, had a homeowner, her name was Cassie Robinson, and our listeners can go back and listen to Cassie’s interview. Cassie was a, or is still, like a 15 plus year investor with me, she has about seven houses now. She sold a couple. And right two years ago or so, one of her houses burnt completely to the ground. Well, I can’t say completely to the ground. The brick remained. But the top of the house, adorable three-bedroom, one-and-a-half bath in Berclaire, and just the roof just lit up. And it was an absolutely an insurance claim. There was no vandalism. There was no arson. There was no mistake made by the tenant. She wasn’t even home. And when we went to do the claim, we’ve had a significant amount of inflation and value of the property over the last three years. And between 2016 and 2020, there had also been an uptick in the value increasing for real estate all over the United States. So when she went to do the claim, they told her that on her $165,000 home that she had about $85,000 worth of coverage because of the limits that she had set when she created the policy back in 2006-2008. One of the biggest complaints that Cassie had and of course we’re not going to mention who the insurance company was I can tell you it was not State Farm but one of the biggest complaints that Cassie had was that the insurance broker that she was working with wasn’t re-evaluating her property for proper coverage. This has been a meteoric inflationary period and just a meteoric rise in home values. It’s crazy. Our houses are worth twice as much as they were 15 years ago or even 10 years ago. So my question to you is how does State Farm watch for these gaps and does State Farm have a re-evaluation technique or method, system in order to make sure that people have proper coverage on their properties?
Trey
0:26:06 – Yes. So, there’s a corporate side and then there’s a personal side. So, the corporate side are homeowner policies, rental property policies, renter’s policies, condo policies, pretty much any type of homeowner type policy that is out there. Under state farm, we have an inflation index that’s built into the policy. And so from a corporate side, within our policy, you will see pretty much especially here over the last, you know, six, seven years, almost every renewal, the coverage is increasing a little bit at a time. So on the personal side, for me in my office, I use a third party in my Bartlett office, and then I’ve been doing it myself with Lakeland, since we were still fairly new at being out here. But we have a process in place where I am sending invitations to review policies with everybody in our book. So my goal is to go through our book at least once every two years. And so every two years, my policyholders should be getting a call from our office to at least an invitation to come in and review our policy. And so ultimately between the inflation index and our personal invitations that should never happen under my watch and that’s the goal right. I’m not perfect by any means but that’s the goal. I mean I’ll tell you a couple examples. One I had a review yesterday and her policy is renewing in January. The renewal has already gone out and her coverage coverage went up right at about $30,000. So from 2023 to 2024, that replacement cost, the dwelling coverage on her home went up about $30,000. I had another scenario, Monday, we have a tool that we use to determine replacement cost. I can plug information into the tool based off of details about the house, and it will shoot back a replacement cost, estimated replacement cost. So here’s what SafeFON thinks it would cost to rebuild your house if you had a total loss. Well, that tool had not been run since 2007. So it’s kind of similar to your story. So I went back and looked and luckily because, and this is where I think, again, the company matters because we had that inflation index, I think it was originally at like 307 in 2007, 307,000. We had it insured for about 625 currently. So that just goes, that’s just the inflation index. So just the inflation index has taken it to 625. I went into the tool because I inherited this policy. I wasn’t sure if it was gonna let me do it, but I searched their name. It actually pulled up. I saw $307,000 last run in 2007. And there’s a button that I can hit recalculate. And that recalculate button went to like $658,000. You talked about, you know, 2007, well over doubling the cost to rebuild from 2000, all the way to 2023 is, is astronomical. And so I think that just kind of proved my point of, Hey, we need to make sure. While it’s nice to have this inflation index to kind of rely on, I don’t want to just rely on that. I want to rely on the policy reviews because it’s important to me to also, you know, obviously get to know my customers and policy holders, but at the same time, the whole purpose of the review is to make sure everybody is properly insured and luckily we were able to do that.
Aaron
0:29:29 – That proves such a big point that we’ve been telling investors all these years, but I’m so glad that we’re having this conversation because every listener needs to own this fact. You’ve got to review your insurance policy with your agent annually. The rates of inflation being double-digit I think in 21, like that’s insane. And so if this investment is a part of your future cash flow and your future financial ability to care for yourself, and of course the buzzword is passive income, if you are truly looking to obtain or establish passive income for you later in life, you’ve got to protect that investment. Put everything that you have into it, neglect your insurance policy and coverages, and then find yourself with a massive loss like Cassie did. And so if you want to know more about her story, you can go and listen to her episode. Review your insurance every year. I talked to an attorney about this. For the insurance policy holder, it is your obligation to protect yourself by knowing what your policy covers and evaluating whether or not that coverage is enough for yourself I can’t do it for you Trey earlier mentioned about having an insurance license man the amount of Education that goes into that the amount of study and then the amount of continuing education Hours that Trey takes in order to remain compliant and then he’s got his corporate regulations and standards and reporting systems and tools. Trey has got several levels of qualifications and he cares. I have worked with other insurance people that it’s a job that’s all it is is just a job. If you’re in another state you know finding an agent like Trey that will take the time to get to know you, understand your goals, be accessible by phone, I can call Trey anytime, we text you know often and so having that agent it is a phenomenal Counterpart to who we are because we do the same thing every single one of my homeowners has my cell phone Everyone they never call me on average they may talk to me once every three years Or we may have a year where they need to talk to me 20 times or 25 times I promise you and I’m trying not to over sell Trey here here, he will respond and be involved if you have a tricky year. That’s the whole reason why you have a reliable insurance agent and why you would choose to use a company like State Farm is because of that accessibility. And Trey’s support staff is also incredible. That’s another major compliment that I can give to his offices. He makes sure that you’re going to get a response.
Trey
0:31:56 – Yeah, I was going to make sure that before we got off here that I was going to compliment them because everything that we’ve been able to accomplish in our office, both from a production standpoint and a service standpoint. Because of my team, I’ve got 8 people between both offices and, you know, it’s just 1 of those things where. Without the team, it’s good. Real quick, your attorney story kind of reminded me of this. When I was working for an agent, I remember the agent saying something along the lines of, hey, you know, if they don’t know what they have, that’s kind of their problem, not necessarily their problem, but it’s their responsibility to look at their renewals every year. We’re sending them renewals, we’re sending them pieces of mail throughout the year. And so I can attest to what you said about that, but I’d never want to be put in that situation to where I’ve got a little bit more control of that situation by reviewing their policies on an annual basis.
Aaron
0:33:00 – And I can really appreciate that the insurance agent who was handling her situation immediately referred her case to legal. Because if you know that there’s going to be a legal inquiry into what your obligations were as a professional to provide best practices, to provide if you have some sort of fiduciary responsibility and obviously in your industry, highly regulated industry, they knew that they were in trouble when the house burnt, we filed the claim, they said it was worth 85 and the homeowner said you’ve got to be kidding me. Very similar story, you know, 15 years between evaluations, that is absurd. If you’re hearing this podcast, I hope that you will always be paying attention to your policy, discuss what’s in your policy if you have an investment partner or if you’re investing with your spouse, you know, or a family trust or if you have a family attorney or if you have a realtor or a property manager. It is good to say to these people who aren’t qualified to advise you but have experience to say this is my policy, do you think I’m underinsured, what do you think? And we’re gonna send you back to your insurance agent but as a realtor I can look up what the going value is for your property and surmise more or less as an opinion what the level of coverage should be at least to replace to our listeners to they need to understand if any one of you have been in a Home Depot or a Lowe’s or a material building material supply store over the last three years good grief we all talked about the cost of a sheet of plywood quadrupling in price. So the replacement cost is honestly is never going to be cheaper than it is right now. It’s always going to go up. So we need to remain vigilant to know that in a catastrophic situation, you’re going to be able to rely on your insurance company to make you whole. And Trey has been actively involved with me personally in making sure that I was made whole by an insurance claim. And so I really appreciate him for that, and he’s not my agent, but he knows my agent, and my agent is getting close to 68, you know, close to a retirement age, and so my agent is State Farm. Trey still, as my friend and as a fellow State Farm agent, worked in tandem with me to help me gain clarity on a particular claim and the gap that was there. So, with that, what I’d like to do is, Trey, I wanna thank you for coming on with us today. I want to thank you for just being very genuine and open about your experiences. Trey, if you could, one more time, just tell us how people can reach out to you?
Trey
0:35:23 – Yeah, absolutely. You can reach us online at heytrey.com, or you can reach either of our offices. Our Bartlett office is 901-755-564172 and our Lakeland office is 901-755-5657.
Aaron
0:35:43 – All right. Fantastic. I hope you give him a call. Thanks for listening. I’m excited to have Trey on the next time. Thanks, Trey.
Trey
0:35:48 – Yeah, thank you. You all have a good day.
Aaron
0:35:50 – You too.
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