Insurance in Windsor, Colorado

What Windsor homeowners and drivers deal with

Wind and hail coverage

Windsor has a clearer sense than most Front Range towns of what wind can do. The 2008 tornado is still a reference point for anyone who lived here then, and it left a lot of households paying closer attention to the wind and hail section of their homeowners policy than the average homeowner ever does.

Two settings decide what a wind or hail claim is worth. The first is your wind and hail deductible, which is often separate from your main deductible and is sometimes written as a percentage of your dwelling coverage rather than a flat dollar amount. On a $600,000 home, a 2% wind and hail deductible means $12,000 out of pocket before the policy pays. The second is whether your roof is scheduled at replacement cost or actual cash value. Replacement cost pays to put a new roof on. Actual cash value pays what the old roof was worth after depreciation.

Send us your current policy and we will tell you which way yours is written.

Insuring a new build for what it costs to rebuild

A large share of Windsor housing went up in the last twenty years, and new construction comes with an insurance question that older homes do not raise as sharply: what number goes in the dwelling coverage field.

The instinct is to use the purchase price. That is usually wrong, because the purchase price includes the lot, and the lot does not burn down. What the policy needs to cover is the cost to rebuild the structure at today's labor and materials prices, which in Northern Colorado has moved a long way in a short time. Insure to the purchase price and you can end up over-covered on land you would never need to replace, or under-covered on a rebuild that costs more than the house did.

It is also worth being clear on what your builder warranty does. A warranty covers workmanship and defects for a defined period. It is not insurance, and it will not respond to hail, fire, or wind. They are two separate things, and new homeowners often assume the warranty is doing more than it is.

The good news on a new build is that new roofs, new wiring, and new plumbing frequently rate better than older housing stock. That is worth asking about directly.

The Larimer and Weld county line

Windsor sits across two counties, and not everyone knows which one their address falls in. It can affect how a policy is rated, along with a handful of things that have nothing to do with insurance. If you are not sure which side you are on, we can check it in about a minute.