Insurance Can Kill a Deal Now. Get the Quote Before Your Window Closes.

Insurance used to be the boring part of buying a house. You called somebody a week before closing, they gave you a number, you paid it and nobody thought about it again.

Insurance no longer reliably works that way, and the buyers who find out late are the ones it costs. A quote that comes back much higher than expected, or a carrier that will not write the house at all, is now a real possibility, and the time to discover it is while you still have a way out.

This is the single most useful thing in this article.

When you go under contract, your due diligence window is the period where you can still investigate the house and act on what you find. Most buyers use it for the inspection and nothing else.

Call an insurance agent in that same week. Give them the address, the year built, the roof age and whether there is a pool. Ask two questions: what will it cost, and will you write it at all.

If the answers are fine, you have lost a phone call. If they are not, you found out while you still had options rather than three days before closing when the only options left are bad ones.

The roof, more than anything else. Age, material and condition. An older roof is the most common reason a quote comes back high or a carrier declines, and it is the factor people are least prepared for. A roof can be perfectly functional, pass an inspection, and still be old enough to be an underwriting problem.

Claims history, on the house and on you. Insurers look at what has been claimed on the property and what you have claimed elsewhere. A house with a water claim in its recent past is treated differently from one without, and the buyer inherits that history.

A pool. It is a liability question rather than a property one, and it generally shows up in the number. Whether a pool is worth it is a separate question that I covered in does a pool add value to a Las Vegas home, but the insurance line belongs in the monthly cost when you are comparing houses.

The systems. Age of the electrical panel, the plumbing and the water heater. Older systems in certain configurations are underwriting flags, not just inspection findings.

Distance to a fire hydrant and a fire station. It is mostly a non-issue inside the valley, and occasionally a real one at the edges.

Your credit-based insurance score. Legal and widely used in Nevada, and it surprises people who have never heard of it.

What you choose. Deductible, replacement cost versus actual cash value, and the extras. Two quotes on the same house can differ because they are not the same cover.

People assume the insured amount should match what they paid for the house. It usually should not.

A homeowners policy is generally concerned with rebuilding the structure, not with buying the property again. The land is not going to burn down. Depending on the house and the market, the rebuild figure can be well below the purchase price, or in some cases above it if construction costs have moved.

So a policy that looks too small relative to the sale price is not automatically wrong, and matching it to the purchase price is not automatically right. Ask your agent to explain how they arrived at the rebuild figure, and have them say out loud what is not covered.

Roof age has become a buyer's financing and insurance problem, not only a repair question.

An older roof that would once have produced a credit at the negotiating table can now produce a buyer whose quote came back badly, or who cannot get the house written at all. That is a deal risk rather than a price adjustment.

Worth doing before you list:

Know the roof's age and have the paperwork. If it has been replaced, find the invoice. A buyer's agent asking "how old is the roof" and getting "not sure" is a worse answer than a straight number.

Know your claims history on the property. It will come up, and you are better off raising it than having it found.

Fix the small stuff that reads as neglect. What to fix before selling your Las Vegas home covers what is worth doing and what is not, and the general rule holds here too: condition signals get priced, by buyers and by underwriters.

The home inspection article covers what else tends to surface at the same point in a deal.

The summer is hard on equipment and on roofs. A valley roof lives a different life from one in a mild climate, which is part of why age matters so much here. The same heat that drives the July power bill is working on the roof the whole time.

Your HOA's master policy is not your policy. If you are in a community with one, find out what it actually covers and where your responsibility starts. People discover the boundary at the worst possible moment.

I am a Realtor. I am not an insurance agent and I do not sell insurance. I am not telling you what cover to carry, what deductible to take, what your premium should be, or which carrier to use. Those are questions for a licensed insurance agent, and getting a real one on the phone early is the entire point of this article.

Call 702-881-6562 or email JArendt658@gmail.com.

If you are buying, I will make sure the insurance quote happens inside your window rather than after it, because that is where it belongs and it is the step most people skip.

If you are selling, tell me the roof's age when we talk and I will tell you plainly whether it is going to be a conversation with your buyer.

John Arendt, Realtor, has sold homes across the Las Vegas valley for 20 years, in Henderson, Summerlin, Southern Highlands, Anthem, Boulder City and North Las Vegas.

John Arendt is a Realtor, not a licensed insurance agent, and nothing in this article is insurance advice. Underwriting rules, available cover and pricing vary by carrier, by property and over time. Speak to a licensed insurance agent about any specific property or policy.