It’s been a doozy of a couple of weeks, y’all! We’ve learned a lot from Tropical Storm Ida and the havoc she wreaked. What did you learn? Mark your calendars for our homeowners’ insurance webinar on Sept 30 at 8pm!

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Video Transcript

Susie (00:02):

Hi, Bonnie.

Bonnie (00:05):

Hi, how are you?

Susie (00:09):

I’m okay. I want to start out this recording actually with a shout out to Victoria Andelfinger who told us that she watched our video and was our, our fan girl. She was hilarious. And so we just want to congratulate her on her marriage, her new marriage. Well, relatively new, her wedding. She just had her second wedding because there was a COVID version and then the non-COVID version. So we’re just happy for you.

Bonnie (00:44):

And you make the most beautiful bride x2. Both times you just loked absolutely stunning.

Susie (00:51):

And we love working with you. So congratulations to Victoria and Ryan.

Bonnie (00:57):

Yes, congrats. And we’re kind of back at it. We’ve both been away, Susie and I both got to go to Hawaii, which is crazy and such a gift and we weren’t sure we’d ever get there, but we did. So if anyone has questions about Hawaii, let us know. I just went to Maui and Susie, you went to Maui and Ohau.

Susie (01:22):

We felt relatively safe. And so if you have questions about that or want recommendations on things to do, let us know.

Bonnie (01:30):

Yeah. So back to life, back to reality,

Susie (01:33):

And the biggest jarring back to life thing was of course, tropical storm, Ida that affected many, many of you. Fortunately Bonnie and my home relatively got away relatively unscathed, I will say large credit to our waterproofing. So we have been checking in with all of our clients and we have been giving out recommendations to a lot of people for mold remediation, water remediation, and roofing. One of the top things. And so just off the top of our heads, I think a few things that we’ve learned, one thing that I can think of is home warranties are a good idea. We have bought a few recently. We found a company that we can trust. Now we’ve gone through a couple but we found one that was responsive. And one of our, our recent buyer clients did take advantage of that. And they were super responsive in order to get their water heater that had died because of the flooding replaced quickly. So if you want information about home warranty, it’s not homeowners’ insurance, it lays on top of that and it can cover a lot of appliances and mechanicals and things. And it’s not that expensive. Yeah. I’m going to get one from my own home because it’s good insurance to have.

Bonnie (03:01):

Yep. And also we highly recommend having a backup for your sump pumps so you can get a battery backup, but that can also fail Susie. And I both have water backups booked in, it can cost around $800, but I think it’s well worth it. Just for example, I was on an airplane while Ida was coming through and I was able to relax a little bit, knowing that should our power go out, our sump pump would continue running. So if you have any questions about any of that, we both have experience with water and…

Susie (03:36):

I’ve experienced flooding in my own home. So I know that process. And then one thing that I think we, I really just, I was kind of glad for the time we had planned even prior to Ida to have a homeowners’ insurance webinar that is currently now scheduled for September 30th. I believe so. We’ll be posting more and more about that, but that is in conjunction in partnership with our wonderful friends of Goosehead Insurance, David Robinson agency. And they are going to be helping us with when to call your insurance company, when not to, especially when it comes to water related claims, super important to know and be informed before you make those calls and you know, reasons we’re not going to sell Goosehead just to sell them, but we really know that they care about their clients and why it’s a good idea to have a broker.

Bonnie (04:38):

Yeah, Goosehead is a broker. That’s what I was going to say. And they’ve worked with all sorts of different insurance companies and they really do help you find the best scenario for your specific home. And they do recommend flood coverage. And many of our clients actually had the flood coverage. Whereas most insurance brokers won’t recommend it if you’re not in a flood zone, but Goosehead does recommend that you get the extra coverage.

Susie (05:03):

To clarify that. One of the things that they posted about post Ida on social media that we shared as well, is that we are, there is no such thing as not a flood zone. You’re either in a, it’s just the degree of risk risk that your area is in. So if you are in a low risk flood area, then your flood insurance will likely be very inexpensive. It’s when you’re in a high-risk area that it becomes more costly. So anyone can get flood insurance. And it’s not a bad idea because as we saw last week, anyway,

Bonnie (05:36):

Things are changing rapidly. So unfortunately, yes,

Susie (05:41):

And one of our lenders on our office call this morning just pointed out cause they have New Jersey manufacturers as do we, and we love them, but he recently switched because his, sump pump failure coverage was not that great under New Jersey manufacturer. So it’s something that I’m going to be looking into just how much you get if you have a sump pump failure, cause that’s why a lot of people had flooding this week, this past week.

Bonnie (06:10):

Yes. So anyway, if you need anything at all, please reach out to us. We’re happy to share our resources with you and our connections. And we want everyone to get back to back to normal. If we can, at some, you know, at some point, this crazy world will quit throwing punches our way. One good thing is it looks like our schools are starting on Monday, which was a delay, but they did send out a notification saying schools will be starting on Monday. So we’re looking forward to our children being in the classroom and we are hoping for a healthy semester for them.

Susie (06:49):

Yes And then for those of you who are in other schools or other districts or have kids that have already started hoping they have had a great start to the new year. And again, if you need anything at all or a few, I went to great mimosa happy hour this morning, first thing in the morning. So celebrating everybody, getting back to school. So we’re happy to celebrate with you.

Bonnie (07:15):

Yes. And enjoy the gorgeous weekend ahead, everyone.

Susie (07:20):

Okay. See you next week.

Bonnnie (07:22):

See you next time. Bye. Bye.