My Personal Finance Blog

Those who own a mobile home often ask if there’s a type of insurance that is something between home and car insurance and is suitable for covering their property. The answer is positive, as there is a special type of insurance products designed to cover mobile homes, and they are relatively inexpensive, with premiums of about $250 per year. And if you really want to make sure that your mobile home will be paid for if it gets damaged, it’s not a big price to pay for certainty and some peace of mind.

This type of insurance coverage makes part of general liability insurance coverage. Claims filed under this type of insurance usually deal with medical costs, lost income, trauma and sometimes property damage. Typical mobile home policies have the same aspects of coverage as ordinary home protection, including the actual replacement and repair costs of the house, injuries sustained by other people (besides you and your family members) on your property, living expenses if you have to dwell in another location due to repair, and the items contained in your home. The main difference here is that the same coverage applies while your house is on the move, too. And as with any other type of insurance, the rates vary significantly from one company to another.

Home insurance whether it’s a mobile home or a typical house is first and foremost used to protect your property from such hazards as fire, storm, and theft, acts of vandalism, natural calamities, explosions and technological calamities. The items contained within your home will also be covered, including furniture, equipment and valuables such as jewelry (to an extent).

And just like with ordinary houses home insurance quotes for mobile homes can vary significantly from one provider to another. The Insurance Information Institute strongly suggests having at least three quotes from different providers before buying a policy. However, the more quotes you have the higher are the chances that you will find a suitable policy for a low price. This is especially useful if you are new to the whole insurance market and don’t know where to start.

Still, mobile home coverage has certain peculiarities that set it apart from the usual home insurance you would purchase for your house. The main feature is that you can benefit from free continental travel coverage, which protects your mobile home financially regardless of where your home is located in the country at the moment.

However, the hidden catch with mobile home coverage is that in most cases it is based on actual cash value of your home, which puts a strong emphasis on depreciation that lowers the replacement cost of your mobile home with each year passing. Still, the policy will cover all the equipment and special features that were initially installed in your mobile home. Read your policy careful before signing it in order to learn which particular items and situations are covered and which are not.

Most mobile home owners neglect the importance of insurance for their homes, believing that it’s not mandatory and taking account the rare use of it. But even if you do not use it quite often and it stays near your house most of the time it doesn’t mean that nothing can happen to your property, and losing something costly due to own negligence is not the smartest thing to do.

The business of insurance is called underwriting. The company enters into a contract (called a policy) and agrees to indemnify a group of people like you against defined losses. So it uses some heavy duty math to work out the probability of the losses being incurred. It’s called risk assessment and relies on a complicated use of statistics. For vehicle insurance, the companies collect the details from every reported traffic accident in the US looking at the age, sex and occupation of the driver, the make and model being driven, the time of day, the road conditions, and the extent of the damage. The insurers share the information on the current costs of replacement parts and the labor to fit them.

They also manage to talk the health insurance companies into sharing their current costs on medical treatment for those injured in traffic accidents. With all this information, they can make good estimates of the cost of loss, i.e. the total amount they may have to pay out if they insure, say, 100,000 drivers. They take this estimate, add the cost of running the insurance company and a profit margin. This total is then divided between all the 100,000 as their premiums. Some companies divide the total equally so the good drivers subsidize the bad. But the majority adjusts the individual amounts based on the driver’s safety record. That way, each policy holder pays more or less depending on how well he or she drives. This is more fair.

But, to cut costs, some insurance companies make more general assumptions about the likelihood of losses. Instead of personalising the risk assessment, they focus the assessment on generalities. The most common is the use of the zip code. In some areas of a town or city, there are higher levels of vehicle theft and vandalism. Some areas have more people driving while intoxicated or impaired through drugs. Because of the design of the local road system, there may also be a higher number of accidents. The insurers therefore charge everyone living in those areas a higher premium. Apart from the unfairness at an individual level, some lawyers believe it is active discrimination because many of the zip code areas loaded with higher premiums have higher concentrations of particular racial or ethnic groups. California has formally prohibited insurance companies from using zip codes, credit scores and other factors not directly relevant to the assessment of driver safety. In those states, insurers continue to trade and make a profit. It has not been the end of the world they predicted.

So, depending on the US state in which you live, your premium may either be calculated based on your personal driving record, or it may be based on your zip code and credit score. Either way, the task of finding the cheapest car insurance remains the same. You have to shop around the companies licensed to sell policies in your state and find the best deal. If there is active competition between the insurers, the premiums will be lower and you will find cheap car insurance without too much difficulty. But if the state is unregulated and insurers do not compete, it will be more difficult to find a cheap policy.

This might sound strange to you if you have spent the money on putting an insurance policy in place, but there are times when you should consider not making a claim. It really can protect you from greater losses if your premium rates suddenly rocket up or, worse, the insurance company decides it would prefer you to take your business elsewhere. So let’s take it one step at a time. Almost every policy imposes a duty on homeowners to make claims either within a set time or a “reasonable” time.

If you miss out on a time limit, you have no right to claim. When is a claim made on a “timely” basis? You will be expected to notify the insurer of a theft or vandalism within days. Reports of serious damage will be expected within two weeks and certainly never longer than 30 days. This can put you under pressure if the policy requires you to get estimates from local contractors, but no-one ever said a policy was going to be worded in your favor. So, if you have reliable estimates of the amount lost and/or costs of repair, now comes the big decision.

As a general rule, you should only make claims if the amount is greater than the deductible. If you are going to pay out of your own pocket in any event, silence will benefit you in most cases. However, be careful if there is a third party liability element involved. Suppose the wind lifts two or three roof tiles and one blows down into the street, hitting someone on the sidewalk. The cost of repairing the roof may be small but the risk of a major claim for personal injuries cannot be ignored. Always make a claim when you cannot put numbers on a possible third party claim. Now comes the difficult part. Every time you make a claim, it’s recorded in a national database called the Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange.

If you make multiple smaller claims, or one or two large claims, this will stay in CLUE for seven years and may deter other insurers from writing a policy for you or encourage them only to quote high premiums. You should therefore consider absorbing losses up to $3,000. You may be lucky – the insurer pays your claim in full and does not raise the premiums. But suppose you have a deductible of $1,000 and the insurer raises your premium for $500 for the next two years. You never know the real costs of the claim until after the event but setting a higher minimum amount for a claim gives you a margin of safety. You should at least break even on the smaller claims.

Dealing with claims shows the homeowners insurance companies at their best or worst. The best pay and do not try to recover their losses by increasing your premium. The worst immediately deny your claim and fight you on technicalities. Never forget every state has a Department of Insurance to deal with complaints against insurance companies. If you think your company is unreasonably denying your claim, make a complaint. There are also attorneys who specialize in insurance matters and, if the claim is for a big amount, it may be worth getting formal legal advice on your rights. Homeowners insurance is not “cheap” and you are entitled to fight to recover the costs of repairing or replacing your home so long as the damage falls within the defined perils.

Article by Hayden

Need a CCTV system!

This article helps you to specify a CCTV system; the intended audience for this guide being either an installing company or an end user.

You should be aware there are many types of CCTV systems available on the market; these range from cheap cctv systems for basic monitoring, best value security camera systems for some form of identification and to high resolution security systems that lead to identification and prosecution.

A good security camera system will offer best value for money without compromise on the quality.

There are many products available on the market which makes it very difficult to identify what products are suitable for your requirement. Sometimes, it is equally difficult to identify areas that are vulnerable and a suitable cctv camera to target that area. Most people forget that a cctv camera system is a long term investment and they should discuss their requirements with a technical sales person before they make the purchase.

Understanding cctv terminology can also be daunting, see our FAQ section for more details.

Understanding your Security requirements

Main reasons for your requirement of cctv security cameras will reflect the type of system you need. Some of the reasons for needing a security system could be:

? Shop theft? Shop or home break-ins? Vandalism ? Industrial espionage? Danger to individuals from attack. ? Health and safety of individuals on the premises or site. ? To replace or reduce manned guarding. ? To supplement manned guarding, making them more efficient. ? To monitor persons entering and leaving the premises. ? To provide visual confirmation of intruders activating an alarm. ? To monitor a remote, unattended site. Reasons for a system could be endless, but for a particular site, there will finite reasons for considering CCTV. If they cannot be listed, you probably don?t need it.

What is the possible solution?

Once a problem is understood, the next step is to find how a solution can be achieved. The solution could be in many forms – it could be an intruder alarm system, some form of deterrent (lighting, fencing and gates), a cctv system or manned guarding.

Your need will depend on the circumstances and requirements on any particular site, but it is important to at least make a list and consider all the possibilities. Some options maybe impracticable and others maybe too expensive but you should finish up with a short list of possibilities. Quite often, the solution will point to a cctv system as this will be cheaper and more affordable.

Decided that you need CCTV Systems?

Before selecting the type of cctv system that will fulfil your requirements, you should consider; the type of cctv cameras you need, how you will monitor the system, will you require network access (remote internet access) and cabling.

Type of cctv cameras you need:-

Colour cameras generally require a higher level of lighting than their Black & White counterparts do. Colour cameras give the advantage of being able to easily distinguish and detect objects simply by their colours where Black & White cameras offer better resolution in low light conditions.

? Covert cameras. These cameras are so small they cannot be easily seen or are disguised as a different device (such as smoke detector, PIR etc).? Day/Night cameras. These cameras switch from colour to black and white depending on lighting levels. They are ideal for variable lighting conditions.? Night Vision cameras. These cameras have their own light source in a light spectrum that can’t be seen by the naked eye. ? Outdoor cameras. These cameras have hardened, waterproof outer bodies.? Speed Dome cameras (Pan, Tilt, Zoom). These cameras allow for remote control of what the camera is pointed at and what it is focused on. ? Vandal Proof cameras. These cameras come in hardened cases that can resist physical abuse.

How you will monitor the cctv system?

? Main Output ? Most CCTV DVRs have composite video output which can be viewed on standard TV Monitors (like AV input or SCART input)? Spot out / Call output ? This output is also composite Video which can be used to monitor cctv cameras in full screen mode in sequence.? VGA output ? this output is standard output used on PCs. Any VGA TFT LCD monitor can be used.

Network Access / Remote Access ? CCTV DVR Access over the internet (broadband)

? Internet Access ? Most CCTV DVRs now days have remote access via the internet? Simplex ? DVR can only perform either record or play back but cannot perform both simultaneously. ? Duplex ? DVR can only perform two things simultaneously (record, play back or remote viwing but not all three simultaneously).? Triplex ? DVR will perform all three things simultaneously (record, play back and remote playback)? Pentaplex – cctv DVR can carry record, playback, remote access, remote playback.

What type of cctv cables are there?

? Pre-made leads ? these are pre-fabricated leads with BNC and power connectors already terminated on the cable. Very simple to install, no real skill required. These leads are design to carry low voltage (12V DC) upto a distance of around 35m. Distance greater than 35m will cause picture corruption with the camera. ? Local AC power – where the distance is greater than 35m, if cameras are powered locally, you can cover much greater distances. For distances upto 100m, RG59 coaxial cable could be used.? Combined Coaxial cable with power ? RG59 coaxial cable but 2 core power cable attached (like a Shotgun).? CAT5E ? Longer distances can be covered CAT5E in-conjunction with passive transceivers.

Selecting the most suitable cctv system is a compromise between the quality, area you want to cover and the overall budget. It is advisable that you have in-depth discussion with the technical sales person before you select the security cameras or the diy cctv system you need. A good technical person will try to understand your need, explain the difference between the various cctv cameras before any recommendation.