If you took out a mortgage on your home, the lender required that you carry homeowner’s insurance. If your home is in a flood zone, they also required you carry flood insurance.
But something often NOT mentioned is taking out riders on your homeowner’s policy, specifically sewer backup and sump pump or earthquake. The cost to add these riders is not expensive, and given some of the torrential rains we’ve had recently, with folks experiencing electric outages (causing sump pump failure if no battery backup) and/or sewage backups through the basement drains, if you do not have this rider on your homeowner’s policy, the likelihood of your homeowner’s policy covering the damage is low to non existent. Costs for each rider vary by policy, but I’ve heard they can be as low as $15 – $60 per year.
Here in Iowa, we are north of an earthquake fault line, the New Madrid Fault Line (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Madrid_Seismic_Zone). But should a major earthquake occur on this fault line, we will certainly feel the effects here in Iowa.
Insurance is a balancing of risks, with the lower the risk or misfortune, the lower the premium. Sump pump failure and sewer backups, however, do not carry high premium costs, but the clean up can be expensive and icky. Contact your homeowner insurance company and see about adding this coverage if you’d like to minimize this risk.
