Any recommendations for good farm/ranch insurance companies (or agents)? The property is located in Southern California and we would ideally be able to do a package that would cover the house, barn, liability, etc. Thanks in advance!
Jaded Southern California (San Diego county) resident for the past 17 years. I suggest you familiarize yourself quite quickly with California fair plan.
Hopefully, you are not a person in the process of a purchase and looking to find something as a current resident.
I had State Farm for 25 years and they dropped me two years ago and I went through a very exhausting painful and expensive process reached out to probably 15 companies. I’m now in a main insurance and liability with Aegis and wraparound fire with fair plan and I hate it and paying a lot more than I did three years ago.
I’m bracing for the additional fee that fair plan seems to be intending to impose upon all of us to pay for all of the other losses across the state with recent LA fires
1 Like
I’m replying to my own post. I became so frustrated during the process of trying to find insurance for my own property that I almost contemplated turning it over to the bank and letting them find and then impose what is called “lender imposed insurance” Let them find a company to insure their investment.
I also realized during this process that if I did not have a mortgage on this property that I would probably take my chances and self insure. Because if I calculate all the money I’ve spent on insurance in all my 20 years of owning a property the amount I’ve paid insurance has not equal what I’ve paid out to fix problems that insurance would not cover.
From what I understand with lender imposed insurance, it’s highly expensive but then they flirt with a problem they had in 2008 when people can’t even afford their own mortgage and drop the keys back off at the bank and say “here you go take the place back”.
Sorry, OP. As I said in my very first comment. Highly jaded Southern California resident here.
1 Like
well at least when I was a bank officer admittedly it was decades ago, the insurance the bank would back then obtain for an asset that was found to be uninsured was very, very, very expensive. The cost we added to the loan. The cost was many times what the party could have obtained if they had obtained the insure themselves. Also I believe the bank was listed as the beneficiary
For sure. But I think you hit on an important highlight “decades ago” the insurance market has changed even in the past three years with the fires in California and the floods in Florida.
My insurance premium tripled from about $5k years to 15,000 a year. And I spent hours and hours trying to find even that! And a little bit of stockholm syndrome was grateful that my captors had given me that!
Part of me really did start to think- Let the banks figure this out. I am not even close to a unique situation. Let them do the legwork and come back to me. I’m a pretty damn solid investment, and if whatever insurance they found for the rest of their house of cards – let those chips fall where it may.
I did find a solution, but I’m one of an N of 10,000 in my area. It’s a house of cards.
1 Like
I definitely do NOT recommend Travelers. I used Travelers on my farm with boarding business in Florida for five years without issue. Then I got Travelers for a personal home farm purchase this past summer in Georgia. They let me close with almost no information, said they didn’t need an inspection for the barn when I tried to give them one.
Then less than two months later, they dropped my coverage with three days’ notice, stating the barn was in too bad of condition (some damaged siding boards and rust on the roof that wasn’t leaking) and there was debris in the yard (boxes from us unpacking while moving in when the “inspector” came by). They gave me no opportunity to fix the supposed “issues.” And their decision was based on some random guy that came to my property that did not identify himself, walked around for five minutes, didn’t get closer than 40 feet to the barn, and left ((husband is a bit naive and let him, I was out of town for work).
Me trying to be honest (stupid), couldn’t get any insurance coverage from anyone after that. I scrambled and called dozens of places. Ended up having to tear the 200+ year old barn down.
During the process, I learned that Travelers has been dropping policies for made up BS for over a year now. I saw reports online of people being dropped for things like “debris in yard” and it was their patio furniture. One agent I tried told me that she had a client recently get dropped by Travelers after they gave him a laundry list of things that had to be fixed within 30 days, he fixed them in 28 days and sent photo proof, and they said “too bad we’re cancelling your policy anyway.” She herself has Travelers and told me that they tried to cancel her policy for “refusing an inspection.” Some guy showed up at her house one day, didn’t identify himself, just said he was there to take some pictures of the property. She told him no, as he wouldn’t identify himself. That was her “refusing an inspection” according to Travelers.
1 Like
Dianna Connelly. No idea if she can write outside of WA but if she can’t she can get you pointed in the right direction. She was very informative and answered a LOT of questions for me and got me several quotes and options quickly and spent a lot of time on the phone with me explaining them. She was highly recommended by my equine atty while I was getting my LLC off the ground last year. She also took the time to walk me through the process of trying to get my two mares insured, apologized at what a pain in the ass it was and wasn’t even mad when I threw my hands up and said never effing mind at how ridiculous it was (I couldn’t find the freakin bill of sale on a weanling from years ago when I’ve since registered and inspected her?? and they wanted to write off her SKIN because she has seasonal allergies? get a freakin life). Anyway, Dianna was great. She even handled a phone call with me while she was at a three-day event at a booth 
I went with American Reliable by the way for my farm commercial insurance, by the way. It replaced my home insurance, covers all my commercial needs plus all my equipment (dump trailer, manure spreader, 4wheeler, arena drags, mower, est on how much hay on average I have on hand, tack, etc, my truck and trailer is on my auto ins thru a diff company), my barns, liabilities, my events, and the price was shockingly reasonable.
1 Like
