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Speaker 1: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is

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Speaker 1: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or

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Speaker 1: learn this stuff they don't want you to know. A

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Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt,

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Speaker 2: my name is Noah.

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Speaker 3: They call me Ben. We're joined as always with our

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Speaker 3: super producer Ball, Mission Control Deck, and most importantly, you

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Speaker 3: are you.

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Speaker 4: You are here.

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Speaker 3: That makes this the stuff they don't want you to know.

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Speaker 3: Skirt Skirt. Today's episode is about something a lot of

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Speaker 3: people might find boring. It's a peculiar type of product.

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Speaker 3: It's something you buy out a necessity instead of for fundsies,

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Speaker 3: something that mainly just adults get. It's something everyone worries about.

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Speaker 3: And the weird thing is it's one of the it's

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Speaker 3: one of the only things that the more you use it,

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Speaker 3: every single time you use this thing that you paid for,

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Speaker 3: it gets more expensive.

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Speaker 4: Oh I know, this one's from the Lord of the Rings.

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Speaker 4: This is a Gollum riddle.

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Speaker 5: It's the wind, It's time Wait, it's a timeshare silence,

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Speaker 5: It's it's.

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Speaker 4: It's a million.

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Speaker 3: Nelson's on the road again. Uh yeah, it's you nailed

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Speaker 3: it No, uh sort of, it's it is. It's like

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Speaker 3: a ridiculous situation because it does feel like a riddle,

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Speaker 3: doesn't it? Like how the hell could this one thing

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Speaker 3: have all these attributes we described? Who wants to do it?

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Speaker 3: For anybody who hasn't read the title? What are we

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Speaker 3: talking about?

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Speaker 2: Insurance? But specifically insurance for your your stuff, your house.

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Speaker 5: Your house and all the stuff contained within it. Yeah,

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Speaker 5: around it, you know, out out buildings, whatever, you know,

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Speaker 5: all that.

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Speaker 2: Stuff any one that happens to come on to your property.

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Speaker 3: Right yes, now in most cases that is, that is true.

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Speaker 3: But I mean think about how weird that is. Like

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Speaker 3: these are cold open I want to go too long.

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Speaker 3: But you know, if you went to a shoe store,

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Speaker 3: you bought a pair of shoes, you wore out the

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Speaker 3: shoes over time, you went back to the shoe store

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Speaker 3: and they said beat me here, Paul, They said, hey,

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Speaker 3: you buddy, now your next pair is twice as expensive.

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Speaker 3: You would never go to that shoe store again. But

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Speaker 3: that's exactly how home insurance works.

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Speaker 4: Right. I wish I.

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Speaker 2: Could do they sell shoe insurance. I would do that.

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Speaker 5: It's technically covered. It's technically covered if it's in your closet.

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Speaker 3: That's why you park your car and a house during

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Speaker 3: a storm.

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Speaker 5: We'll get to it in a bit, but Ben, I

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Speaker 5: think that metaphor, I guess is more appropriate than you

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Speaker 5: might even think the idea of, like dang, well, if

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Speaker 5: that were the case, I guess I'd never wear those shoes,

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Speaker 5: would I?

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Speaker 3: So home insurance in particular, this is going to strike

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Speaker 3: a chord with a lot of us listening tonight. There

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Speaker 3: is a storm on the way, both metaphorically and literally, and.

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Speaker 2: We'll take a ride on that storm when we get

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Speaker 2: back from a word from our sponsor.

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Speaker 3: Here are the facts writers on the storm. What is

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Speaker 3: home insurance?

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Speaker 4: We described it.

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Speaker 3: It's a sub category of property insurance, and you guys

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Speaker 3: nailed it because full disclosure. You know, homeownership can be

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Speaker 3: tough for a lot of people in our generation and younger,

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Speaker 3: especially these days. And some of us are homeowners. In

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Speaker 3: the audience tonight, many and some of our hosts rough homeowners.

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Speaker 3: And it's kind of pain in the butt, but it

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Speaker 3: does make sense, right, Like you know, a small a

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Speaker 3: small mistake can be very expensive, very quickly.

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Speaker 2: It can. It can be devastating too, especially if it's

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Speaker 2: not even a mistake if it's an act of God

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Speaker 2: or nature or the universe, however you want to think

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Speaker 2: about it.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, we've known each other for a while, and you guys,

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Speaker 3: I've both been homeowners at various times, and when we're

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Speaker 3: just hanging out or chatting before after a show or

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Speaker 3: even not work related, we hit on some of the

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Speaker 3: same things. For most people in the US, if you

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Speaker 3: were a homeowner, your home is your largest financial asset.

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Speaker 3: That's simply the stats, and repairs are inevitable over time.

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Speaker 3: Your water heater goes out, I'm like, I'm trying not

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Speaker 3: to point fingers at this one, but I remember, yeah,

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Speaker 3: Matt's Okay, can I say it. Matt's water heater went.

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Speaker 3: It was a whole.

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Speaker 2: It didn't go out, it started leaking, and I didn't

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Speaker 2: know it was leaking, and it leaked water in black

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Speaker 2: nastiness all over my floor and into my crawl space,

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Speaker 2: and I didn't discover until way too late, And thankfully

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Speaker 2: I had some pretty good homeowners insurance.

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Speaker 4: You know.

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Speaker 5: As funny as I moved in to this place and

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Speaker 5: almost immediately my sump pump, which is another expensive piece

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Speaker 5: of equipment, just basically exploded and just leaked foul you know,

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Speaker 5: poop water. Basically a some pop if anyone doesn't know,

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Speaker 5: is a thing that you know, pumps the stuff from

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Speaker 5: a downstairs bathroom or drain or whatever, like I've got

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Speaker 5: laundry stuff in the basement to the upstairs where it

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Speaker 5: then goes out, you know, and drains with the rest

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Speaker 5: of the stuff from the house. I tried to make

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Speaker 5: a claim for this and it was denied, so I

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Speaker 5: just paid for it out of pocket, and it kind

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Speaker 5: of established a pattern for me where rather than filing

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Speaker 5: an insurance claim anytime something goes wrong up to a

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Speaker 5: certain point it's like catastrophic and I couldn't afford it,

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Speaker 5: I just paid for it myself and then take a

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Speaker 5: tax right off, because you could take a tax right

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Speaker 5: off for improvements to your house. And it's a lot

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Speaker 5: easier to do that than it is to contend with

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Speaker 5: the insurance companies because it's a lot of stuff that

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Speaker 5: you have to file, a lot of you know, boxes

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Speaker 5: you have to tick, and chances are you're gonna get denied.

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Speaker 3: And there's a lot of waiting and do you have

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Speaker 3: to always remember, look, we've got a private insurance is

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Speaker 3: a huge employer in the US. We're not attacking the individuals.

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Speaker 3: We are describing some problems with a broken system. One

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Speaker 3: of the questions I had in another life when I

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Speaker 3: worked in what you could call insurance, was who do

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Speaker 3: the adjusters serve? Yeah, it's not you, that's the company, right,

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Speaker 3: I mean water, heater roof replacements, which inevitably happen over time.

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Speaker 3: Not to mention like you were describing Matt so called

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Speaker 3: acts of God, natural disasters, bad weather, even non catastrophic

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Speaker 3: bad weather like falling trees, flooding, vandalism, a thousand other things.

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Speaker 3: It's tough for a lot of people to have that

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Speaker 3: much liquidity, that much cash in hand with a snap

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Speaker 3: of their fingers. And that's where insurance comes in.

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Speaker 5: And you know, and like the afore mentioned sump pump situation,

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Speaker 5: that's a two thousand dollars replacement, which is right on

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Speaker 5: the edge of what.

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Speaker 4: I could afford to pay out of pop.

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Speaker 5: And rather than deal with it, you know, it can

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Speaker 5: can test the denial of the of the of the claim.

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Speaker 5: I just went ahead and dealt with it and ate it.

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Speaker 5: And then again you can like get that back in

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Speaker 5: the form of a tax ride off at the end

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Speaker 5: of the year, so it does kind of balance out,

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Speaker 5: But it really makes me think about how insurance isn't

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Speaker 5: really you can't just feel. They say insurance is selling

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Speaker 5: piece of mind, but I don't buy that. I don't

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Speaker 5: think it gives me any piece of mind at all.

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Speaker 5: Maybe for like a catastrophic thing like you're talking about,

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Speaker 5: being like a tree falling on your house or an

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Speaker 5: active god, but even that piece of mind is just

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Speaker 5: somewhere down the line. Maybe you'll get some money back

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Speaker 5: and you'll get some coverage for what you've paid into

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Speaker 5: that system. And I guess we should really quickly to

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Speaker 5: summarize a couple of the different types of insurance that

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Speaker 5: apply to homeowners here.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and a big part of this is the window

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Speaker 3: of time. It's something you've been familiar with if you've

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Speaker 3: ever worked freelance, and invoice can take as long as

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Speaker 3: ninety days, but all your other living expense is don't

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Speaker 3: pause for ninety days.

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Speaker 5: And while you might get reimbursed for some of that,

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Speaker 5: it's not going to happen immediately.

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Speaker 3: So often there's new Often people don't have the wherewithal

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Speaker 3: to wait a full year right for that advantage and

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Speaker 3: I love that you point out types of homeowner insurance

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Speaker 3: so the industry calls it HOI. There's actual cash value

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Speaker 3: policy that factors in depreciation, inflation, all that stuff. So

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Speaker 3: like if you have an old water heater, then you

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Speaker 3: get paid some percentage of that original cost. Then there's

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Speaker 3: a replacement cost policy just says hey, if your water

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Speaker 3: heater goes out, then you get a new one that

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Speaker 3: is about the same for this current era or this

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Speaker 3: current year or whatever. You also have to get different

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Speaker 3: types of coverage for your home right Like when Hurricane

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Speaker 3: Katrina hit, a lot of people found their insurance claims

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Speaker 3: denied because they didn't explicitly have have protection for floods

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Speaker 3: or flooding, which is just the terrible thing to hear.

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Speaker 3: You've got to assume that anything in your policy that

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Speaker 3: is not specifically covered may not be covered at all.

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Speaker 5: Well, and a lot of that stuff's buried in the

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Speaker 5: fine print. And we're not lawyers, we don't always know

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Speaker 5: exactly what we there's a certain assumption that these organizations

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Speaker 5: are there to help you out and we're not here

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Speaker 5: to completely malign the insurance you know industry a little bit,

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Speaker 5: but I mean, you know, there is an expectation of like, well,

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Speaker 5: surely they tell me if I need that, but no,

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Speaker 5: they surely will not.

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Speaker 2: Well and as an individual, add ons to insurance like

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Speaker 2: flood protection, specific types of fire protection or whatever, you know,

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Speaker 2: that fine print stuff that can be so cost prohibitive

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Speaker 2: when you're looking at different home insurance policies and when

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Speaker 2: you're already especially if you're in the process of buying

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Speaker 2: a home, which is a laborantine thing that your mind

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Speaker 2: has to navigate through, hopefully with the help of somebody

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Speaker 2: that kind of knows what they're doing. When you get

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Speaker 2: to the home insurance part of that, it is it

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Speaker 2: reminds me of the funeral game a little bit, where

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Speaker 2: you're you're already kind of broken down, You're pretty vulnerable

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Speaker 2: in that state already, and you just kind of want

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Speaker 2: to get it done. And you also you almost all,

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Speaker 2: I don't know in my in my experience, you go

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Speaker 2: for the minimum, like, Okay, I think I'll be okay

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Speaker 2: with this because it's it's expensive no matter where you are, and.

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Speaker 5: At that point, you're just trying to get your monthly

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Speaker 5: payment down because you know, typically it gets factored into

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Speaker 5: your monthly payment, and most people can't afford to pay

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Speaker 5: that full premium in one fell swoop, so you factor

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Speaker 5: it into escrow or whatever. Where you're it adds a

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Speaker 5: couple hundred dollars a month, and you're already house poor

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Speaker 5: from making a massive down payment, so you want that

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Speaker 5: monthly payment to be as low as possible.

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Speaker 4: Therefore, you're much you're willing to overlook.

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Speaker 5: Well, surely I don't need the the volcano insurance, right,

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Speaker 5: there's no man, I mean, there's no active volcanoes near

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Speaker 5: my house.

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Speaker 4: Right.

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Speaker 3: Most people listening tonight do not have a Honda Odyssey

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Speaker 3: add on to their home insurance policy, and that leads to.

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Speaker 4: Things ascess though you probably should.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, just look at the stats. But then also, you know,

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Speaker 3: I'd love that you mentioned Escro account without getting two

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Speaker 3: in the weeds. For most homeowners, you're going to have

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Speaker 3: a mortgage, and your mortgage and these associated costs like

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Speaker 3: homeowners insurance that goes into an Escro account that your

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Speaker 3: lender pays all the stuff out through that through that account. Look,

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Speaker 3: there are a lot of people, you know, to that's

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Speaker 3: point about having the lowest possible denominator or the bare minimum.

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Speaker 3: There are people who would prefer to have no insurance whatsoever.

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Speaker 3: You know, they're like, I don't have a case on

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Speaker 3: my iPhone. I live, you know, by the code of God, playing.

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Speaker 2: Dice, dude. But see, I always thought Ben that it

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Speaker 2: was a requirement for like for I thought, just if

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Speaker 2: you own a home, you have to have homeowners insurance.

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Speaker 2: The way if you have a vehicle and you want

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Speaker 2: to drive with a driver's license, have to have auto insurance.

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Speaker 5: Well, but the only requirement is for the bank. The

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Speaker 5: bank is protecting their investments. You don't have to have

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Speaker 5: it if you own your house out right. I don't

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Speaker 5: believe you do have to have it. It might very state

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Speaker 5: in the state, but okay, you do not.

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Speaker 3: There is no in the United States. There is no

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Speaker 3: state nor federal there's neither state nor federal law requiring

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Speaker 3: you to have homeowners insurance. But if you have a mortgage,

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Speaker 3: you don't totally own your home yet, so the banks

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Speaker 3: or the lenders will require you to get that insurance

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Speaker 3: as part of the deal. And that's all, like you

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Speaker 3: guys said, that's all so that the bank can be

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Speaker 3: made whole if your home is destroyed or if something

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Speaker 3: bad happens. All right, folks stap in our fingers.

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Speaker 4: Wake up. That's it.

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Speaker 3: That's all the background getting to the other stuff. You

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Speaker 3: need to know this, and please do send us your

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Speaker 3: home insurance war stories as well. The price you pay

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Speaker 3: here's why this is on a conspiracy show. The price

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Speaker 3: you pay for home insurance depends upon where you live.

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Speaker 3: And now, to steal the line for Fox News, more

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Speaker 3: than ever, those prices are changing. They are not going down.

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Speaker 3: Everything shows us that the strangeness dare we say a

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Speaker 3: bit of conspiracy here, is only going to accelerate. It's

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Speaker 3: only going to get worse, and much sooner than we

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Speaker 3: would all perhaps like to think.

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Speaker 4: So let's put a pit on that.

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Speaker 5: Think about that for a second, only take a quick

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Speaker 5: ad break, and then we'll come back and get right

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Speaker 5: into the weeds, but not too weedy.

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Speaker 3: Here's where it gets crazy. It's been an open secret

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Speaker 3: in the industry for years. Costly climate catastrophes have driven

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Speaker 3: up the cost of home insurance across the United States,

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Speaker 3: specifically in certain areas, and in some of those areas,

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Speaker 3: they've driven these insurance companies out of the market completely.

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Speaker 3: The industry already has a euphemism for this. These moves

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Speaker 3: are called insurance corrections.

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Speaker 5: Mmmm.

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Speaker 2: Wherever we heard that before? That time correction? Yeah.

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Speaker 5: Stock I mean it's the same thing, dude. It's currency,

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Speaker 5: it really is, and there's a market for it, and

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Speaker 5: it's based on conditions, you know, much like the stock

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Speaker 5: market is, and sometimes things are underassessed and or their

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Speaker 5: speculation that has.

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Speaker 4: To do with certain weather events. It's all predictive.

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Speaker 5: It's like betting on futures in the stock market. It's

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Speaker 5: very interesting that that same term is used, but I

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Speaker 5: think very appropriate.

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Speaker 2: Well, lest we forget Ben already said this in the episode,

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Speaker 2: these are for profit companies every time, no matter what,

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Speaker 2: they are for profit. And if they can't make more

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Speaker 2: money with you paying them every month for nothing happening,

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Speaker 2: then they're having to shell out because stuff's actually happening.

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Speaker 2: Then the there's no business.

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Speaker 4: Yeah.

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Speaker 3: And in June of twenty twenty three, sixty million Americans

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Speaker 3: in just California and Florida found themselves scrambling for protection

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Speaker 3: because they would imagine this. You buy a house and

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Speaker 3: your bank says, okay, congratulations, you're in the homeownership class.

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Speaker 3: Welcome to Florida, California. You need to get homeowners insurance

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Speaker 3: until you're done with your mortgage and you can't find

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Speaker 3: a company that will give you a policy, or even worse,

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Speaker 3: you've lived in California, you've lived in Florida for a

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Speaker 3: number of years, you still have your mortgage, and you

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Speaker 3: get a you get that annual letter from your insurance

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Speaker 3: company and they say, hey, we're not going to renew

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Speaker 3: your coverage. You had a good run. Go try someone else,

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Speaker 3: but not Farmers, cause we're we're getting out of dodge.

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Speaker 2: Like that's nuts. And there are also stories of people

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Speaker 2: being handed a what like a forty percent increase or

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Speaker 2: or even way higher than that.

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Speaker 4: Eighty.

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Speaker 2: I think I didn't I didn't see eighty. But I

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Speaker 2: think you're we're talking where all of a sudden you're

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Speaker 2: gonna just renew your homeowner's insurance and now it's it's skyrockets,

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Speaker 2: and you realize, oh wait, I actually can't afford that.

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Speaker 2: What do you do?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not better either, You're not paying more for

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Speaker 3: something better.

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Speaker 5: Well, no, And and I think I maybe have mentioned

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Speaker 5: in the past that I had a bit of a conundrum,

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Speaker 5: and I'll get to what ultimately the resolution that was

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Speaker 5: a little later. But my homeowner's insurance policy was canceled

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Speaker 5: because I didn't receive or acknowledge some notification that probably

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Speaker 5: came in the US mail. And again, I mean, it's

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Speaker 5: my own fault and consider it, like chalk it up

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Speaker 5: to an experience as a you know, relatively new homeowner.

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Speaker 5: But you have to interact with them because the terms

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Speaker 5: can change, because if you don't like acknowledge the terms

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Speaker 5: of change, then they cancel it. So I mean, maybe

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Speaker 5: I'm misunderstanding the way that works, but that's my understanding

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Speaker 5: is that because I didn't reach out with this renewal period,

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Speaker 5: they just canceled it, you know, unilaterally. And then my

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Speaker 5: mortgage company took it upon themselves because it's a term

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Speaker 5: of my mortgage to have homeowners insurance, and they signed

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Speaker 5: me up for a policy of their choosing that was

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Speaker 5: a good four hundred dollars extra a month and I

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Speaker 5: just like totally ate that for way too long because

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Speaker 5: I was just so frustrated with the whole process.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and that's unfortunately a very common story for a

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Speaker 3: lot of people, even before these climate crises started driving

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Speaker 3: people literally out of house and home. And in defense

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Speaker 3: of these insurance companies, you know, getting mad at them

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Speaker 3: for being for profit is kind of like getting mad

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Speaker 3: at dogs for barking and pooping. It's part of what

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Speaker 3: they do. It's arguably why they're around.

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Speaker 2: It's how the system works. It's it's why they will

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Speaker 2: cover when your entire roof blows off during tornado, because

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Speaker 2: there are enough other people also paying for that tornado

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Speaker 2: insurance and it's expensive.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's all a numbers game, you know. Some

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Speaker 3: of the most I think some of the most high

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Speaker 3: up intellectual mathematicians are underwriters. They're the ones who figure

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Speaker 3: out how much your premium is. A premium is just

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Speaker 3: sort of the dumb word the industry uses for those

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Speaker 3: payments you make monthly or annually or bi monthly or whatever.

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Speaker 3: They don't want to turn people away if they can

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Speaker 3: help it, because that's their business model. They need customers,

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Speaker 3: so they don't want to say no, but sometimes for

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Speaker 3: their own survival as a company, they do have to

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Speaker 3: say no. The numbers. It all goes back to the numbers.

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Speaker 3: The numbers are inarguable. Maybe we talk a little bit

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Speaker 3: about just how crazy things have gotten in California and Florida.

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Speaker 4: Correct.

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Speaker 5: In California, there were eight disaster events from twenty twenty

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Speaker 5: to twenty twenty four that caused between twenty billion with

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Speaker 5: a B and fifty billion in damages can buy. I

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Speaker 5: think wildfires, y'all think of like total loss of property

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Speaker 5: in like Malibu. For example, a good friend of ours,

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Speaker 5: I'll just keep them private, but a very close friend

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Speaker 5: and colleague of ours had a family member who entirely

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Speaker 5: lost their home in Malibu that they'd lived in, you know,

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Speaker 5: for I don't want to say a generation, if not longer.

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Speaker 5: And that is a common story, you know. Yeah, you're

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Speaker 5: running a little bit of a risk living in California,

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Speaker 5: a place where wildfires thrive like that and their rock

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Speaker 5: slides and things like that and erosion. Certainly, so that

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Speaker 5: makes sense that it would maybe cost a little more

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Speaker 5: because the damages and potential events are much likelihood is

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Speaker 5: a little higher there, but still in Florida. On the

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Speaker 5: other hand, thirty severe storms or hurricanes from twenty twenty

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Speaker 5: to twenty twenty four caused between one hundred billion and

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Speaker 5: two hundred billion dollars in damage.

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Speaker 4: One of these, of course, was.

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Speaker 5: Hurricane Ian, the third most just catastrophic costly storm in

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Speaker 5: United States history so far, and again, this a lot

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Speaker 5: of this has to do with the fact that these

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Speaker 5: things are becoming more and more common because of climate change.

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Speaker 3: And this is coming from our good friends at NOAH.

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Speaker 3: So this is a nonpartisan, non political source. This is

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Speaker 3: just a bunch of boffins and eggheads.

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Speaker 2: And that's the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. And this

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Speaker 2: is just one extra thing.

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Speaker 4: Be guys.

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Speaker 2: I want to throw Texas in here too, because I

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Speaker 2: found some interesting stuff on them. And as we were

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Speaker 2: going through the research, I kept thinking back to twenty

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Speaker 2: twenty one. Do you guys remember when there was a

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Speaker 2: big storm in twenty twenty one and power was out

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Speaker 2: for a long long time. I think it was Ury

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Speaker 2: was like a winter storm Ury, and the Texas grid

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Speaker 2: failed basically and there was like it was only I

393
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Speaker 2: think it was ten billion dollars worth in losses like

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Speaker 2: insurance losses for that one storm across all of Texas.

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Speaker 2: And if you look at the numbers again from NOAH

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Speaker 2: with Texas, there are an average of four natural disasters

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Speaker 2: in that state that occur every year, but between twenty

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Speaker 2: nineteen and twenty twenty three they suffered an average of

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Speaker 2: eleven over one billion dollar events every year. Like that's

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Speaker 2: imagine as a state shelling out eleven billion dollars a

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Speaker 2: year knowingly because of natural disasters, and then as an

402
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Speaker 2: insurance company, you know that you've got all of these

403
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Speaker 2: people that you now have to serve to repair all

404
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Speaker 2: of these homes. I don't know that. It just seems

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Speaker 2: unsustainable to me.

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Speaker 3: It reminds me how recently we encountered the hottest day

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Speaker 3: ever recorded on Earth. It was a Sunday in July,

408
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Speaker 3: and it was only the hottest day ever for about

409
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Speaker 3: twenty four hours because the next day was hotter. So

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Speaker 3: the two hottest days on the planet, number one and

411
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Speaker 3: number two, happened consecutively this year, which shows us the

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Speaker 3: pattern is escalating. It's untenable, as many people in California,

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Speaker 3: Texas and Florida can agree even just looking at their

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Speaker 3: home insurance bills. You know what I mean, Like, no

415
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Speaker 3: matter what your political ideology is, the money moves and

416
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Speaker 3: you can tell what the mathematicians are thinking by looking

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Speaker 3: at the bill.

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Speaker 2: Well, yeah, and all they have to do is pay

419
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Speaker 2: a little bit of attention and go, oh, we guys,

420
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Speaker 2: we need to raise our rates by a lot. And

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Speaker 2: when I say a lot, I mean a lot.

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Speaker 4: Yeah.

423
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Speaker 3: Twenty twenty three, the average homeowner insurance premium then Florida

424
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Speaker 3: is six thousand dollars a year, not thick thousand dollars.

425
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Speaker 3: That would be.

426
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Speaker 2: Fair, Robin, thick thousand dollars dollars.

427
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Speaker 3: I mean, but that's that's way above average right in

428
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Speaker 3: the US. I mean, it's definitely higher than Georgia.

429
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Speaker 4: Correct.

430
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Speaker 2: Yeah, think about that being the average. That means some

431
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Speaker 2: people are paying way more than that.

432
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Speaker 4: Right, Yeah.

433
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Speaker 3: And then just this year twenty twenty four, the average

434
00:23:26,240 --> 00:23:29,720
Speaker 3: went up two thousand, seven hundred and seventy dollars. The

435
00:23:29,840 --> 00:23:34,359
Speaker 3: average home insurance in Florida now is eight thousand, seven

436
00:23:34,480 --> 00:23:37,639
Speaker 3: hundred and seventy dollars a year, and it'll probably be

437
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Speaker 3: higher in twenty twenty five.

438
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Speaker 2: Yeah, it'll have to be until it just goes away

439
00:23:42,160 --> 00:23:47,400
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty eight. I'm just joking Florida, I mean,

440
00:23:47,440 --> 00:23:49,919
Speaker 2: not homeowners and sure, okay, let me you know.

441
00:23:52,040 --> 00:23:55,359
Speaker 5: Says by everybody remembers that tool song about sea you

442
00:23:55,400 --> 00:23:58,480
Speaker 5: down in Arizona Bay. I mean, Florida and California are

443
00:23:58,480 --> 00:24:01,959
Speaker 5: two of these locations that they're beautiful and they are

444
00:24:02,040 --> 00:24:07,160
Speaker 5: lovely places to live but there are some somewhat apocalyptic future,

445
00:24:07,480 --> 00:24:11,520
Speaker 5: you know, kind of doom saying things associated with them.

446
00:24:11,560 --> 00:24:14,640
Speaker 3: One hundred percent one hundred percent. And you know, as

447
00:24:14,760 --> 00:24:18,600
Speaker 3: more and more private companies exit these areas, more and

448
00:24:18,600 --> 00:24:23,440
Speaker 3: more people enter state run alternatives. Kind of like how

449
00:24:23,440 --> 00:24:27,639
Speaker 3: if you can't afford private medical insurance, you may have

450
00:24:28,040 --> 00:24:30,239
Speaker 3: you may live in a part of the country that

451
00:24:30,320 --> 00:24:34,080
Speaker 3: allows you to participate in a government plan. And California

452
00:24:34,320 --> 00:24:38,479
Speaker 3: has something called the Fair Plan Association. Florida has something

453
00:24:38,560 --> 00:24:42,720
Speaker 3: called the Citizens Property Insurance Corporation, And as of just

454
00:24:42,840 --> 00:24:47,360
Speaker 3: last year, that Florida state run company alone held the

455
00:24:47,520 --> 00:24:50,800
Speaker 3: homeowner policies for one out of eight of every household

456
00:24:50,840 --> 00:24:51,400
Speaker 3: in Florida.

457
00:24:51,480 --> 00:24:53,679
Speaker 2: That's a lot more than I would have expected. But

458
00:24:53,760 --> 00:24:57,160
Speaker 2: it does make sense, man, watching just watching the news,

459
00:24:57,200 --> 00:25:00,640
Speaker 2: watching the weather recently, especially when you see the kind

460
00:25:00,640 --> 00:25:02,600
Speaker 2: of storm that we just had. And I can't tell

461
00:25:02,600 --> 00:25:05,400
Speaker 2: you the name of it because I'm I didn't keep

462
00:25:05,480 --> 00:25:07,480
Speaker 2: up that well with it. But the storm that formed

463
00:25:07,480 --> 00:25:10,960
Speaker 2: in the Atlantic pretty swiftly became a hurricane and then

464
00:25:11,040 --> 00:25:13,000
Speaker 2: swept across and then went all the way up the

465
00:25:13,040 --> 00:25:16,359
Speaker 2: eastern seaboard of the US, and people from Florida all

466
00:25:16,400 --> 00:25:19,040
Speaker 2: the way up to Upstate New York got flooding, like

467
00:25:19,200 --> 00:25:23,760
Speaker 2: terrible flooding. When that kind of thing is feeling more

468
00:25:23,800 --> 00:25:29,920
Speaker 2: and more like a regular occurrence, it's not good. It's

469
00:25:29,920 --> 00:25:33,000
Speaker 2: not good for anybody who's gonna have to pay homeowners

470
00:25:33,000 --> 00:25:34,240
Speaker 2: insurance agreed.

471
00:25:34,520 --> 00:25:37,640
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's not good for the companies either. I mean,

472
00:25:37,880 --> 00:25:42,160
Speaker 3: there are it's such a headline. It's such red meat

473
00:25:42,200 --> 00:25:46,960
Speaker 3: for a headline, right to divide people or to alarm people,

474
00:25:47,000 --> 00:25:51,320
Speaker 3: to say climate change is pushing home insurance. But there

475
00:25:51,320 --> 00:25:54,439
Speaker 3: are other factors at play. The story is not as

476
00:25:54,480 --> 00:25:57,560
Speaker 3: simple as headlines might imply. So one of the big

477
00:25:57,600 --> 00:26:00,560
Speaker 3: things that people hadn't thought about. I don't know if

478
00:26:00,600 --> 00:26:02,920
Speaker 3: we all thought about this as well before we started

479
00:26:02,960 --> 00:26:07,000
Speaker 3: researching is the role the pandemic played, But maybe not

480
00:26:07,240 --> 00:26:10,280
Speaker 3: in the way we think. There was a great interview

481
00:26:10,320 --> 00:26:13,639
Speaker 3: with a guy named David Blades, which first off, is

482
00:26:13,680 --> 00:26:14,960
Speaker 3: a really cool name.

483
00:26:15,280 --> 00:26:17,960
Speaker 4: Like a magician or something. I mean game.

484
00:26:18,359 --> 00:26:20,440
Speaker 2: He's like a he's a bouncer.

485
00:26:20,920 --> 00:26:24,320
Speaker 3: I picture of talking. Yeah, I picture he's like specializes

486
00:26:24,400 --> 00:26:28,119
Speaker 3: in knives and butterfly knives and switchblades. So he's talking

487
00:26:28,200 --> 00:26:31,520
Speaker 3: to NBC. Yeah, he's talking to NBC, and he's just

488
00:26:31,600 --> 00:26:33,680
Speaker 3: like he's got his hand on a desk and he's

489
00:26:33,680 --> 00:26:36,760
Speaker 3: popping the knife in between his spread out fingers or something.

490
00:26:37,680 --> 00:26:40,880
Speaker 3: But he he said that we need to look at

491
00:26:41,080 --> 00:26:45,880
Speaker 3: us construction cost because before the pandemic, from twenty sixteen

492
00:26:45,920 --> 00:26:49,760
Speaker 3: to twenty twenty, those costs increase between like one and

493
00:26:49,840 --> 00:26:55,360
Speaker 3: three percent, which seemed very reasonable, moderate what you could expect.

494
00:26:55,680 --> 00:26:59,000
Speaker 3: But let's give the let's give a quote directly from

495
00:26:59,480 --> 00:27:00,359
Speaker 3: David Leads.

496
00:27:00,920 --> 00:27:03,040
Speaker 2: Okay, this is a direct quote, and I'm just gonna

497
00:27:03,080 --> 00:27:05,480
Speaker 2: put this here because I think I accidentally made a

498
00:27:05,560 --> 00:27:09,240
Speaker 2: skip over his actual credits. He's the associate director for

499
00:27:09,320 --> 00:27:13,320
Speaker 2: Industry Research and Analytics at am Best, which is a

500
00:27:13,359 --> 00:27:16,960
Speaker 2: global credit agency in data group. Okay, so he said,

501
00:27:17,400 --> 00:27:19,560
Speaker 2: with this increase, you're talking about a very moderate amount

502
00:27:19,560 --> 00:27:24,119
Speaker 2: of inflation. He says, Yet during and after the pandemic,

503
00:27:24,280 --> 00:27:29,520
Speaker 2: supply chains were disrupted, real estate prices skyrocketed, and interest

504
00:27:29,600 --> 00:27:36,080
Speaker 2: rates surged. As a result, construction costs soared thirteen point

505
00:27:36,119 --> 00:27:39,760
Speaker 2: four percent in twenty twenty one and nine point three

506
00:27:39,880 --> 00:27:43,400
Speaker 2: percent the year after. So combine that's twenty two point

507
00:27:43,400 --> 00:27:45,440
Speaker 2: seven percent. I think, if I'm doing my math correctly,

508
00:27:45,440 --> 00:27:49,600
Speaker 2: I may not be, but that amount of construction cost

509
00:27:49,720 --> 00:27:53,200
Speaker 2: increase is that makes so much sense?

510
00:27:53,240 --> 00:27:53,480
Speaker 4: Ben?

511
00:27:54,240 --> 00:27:58,040
Speaker 2: Why why would construction costs increase homeowners insurance?

512
00:27:58,720 --> 00:28:01,879
Speaker 3: Ooh yeah, that's or Dennis Reynolds moment. That's the thing

513
00:28:01,920 --> 00:28:07,359
Speaker 3: where like we haven't thought about that. When construction costs rise,

514
00:28:07,840 --> 00:28:11,639
Speaker 3: so does the cost of literally any repair. So a

515
00:28:11,680 --> 00:28:15,479
Speaker 3: home prices surge in the beginning, but then anytime you know,

516
00:28:15,520 --> 00:28:18,600
Speaker 3: the water heater breaks, anytime you've got to replace the roof,

517
00:28:18,880 --> 00:28:21,760
Speaker 3: anytime a Honda Odyssey hits the side of your house,

518
00:28:22,000 --> 00:28:25,960
Speaker 3: it's going to cost at least twenty something percent more.

519
00:28:26,800 --> 00:28:30,640
Speaker 3: And this means that the insurance companies have to start

520
00:28:30,760 --> 00:28:34,040
Speaker 3: jacking up their rates to a certain threshold. But they

521
00:28:34,040 --> 00:28:37,879
Speaker 3: don't have infinite tolerance. At a certain point, they have

522
00:28:38,000 --> 00:28:41,320
Speaker 3: to ask themselves, well, it's not just a matter of

523
00:28:41,320 --> 00:28:43,760
Speaker 3: whether or not we can turn a profit here, but

524
00:28:43,960 --> 00:28:47,320
Speaker 3: can we act? Can we literally afford to do business

525
00:28:47,400 --> 00:28:51,040
Speaker 3: at all in these areas where we know hurricanes are

526
00:28:51,080 --> 00:28:56,600
Speaker 3: not a possibility but a certitude, you know, a certainty.

527
00:28:56,280 --> 00:28:58,920
Speaker 2: Too, that is that is indeed nuts. And I'm just

528
00:28:58,960 --> 00:29:01,400
Speaker 2: gonna take it really quickly to my water heater situation

529
00:29:01,520 --> 00:29:04,360
Speaker 2: because that was right in pandemic times, and that's when

530
00:29:04,400 --> 00:29:07,840
Speaker 2: construction costs were going way up because the prices of

531
00:29:07,880 --> 00:29:10,240
Speaker 2: wood were going way up, and they had to replace

532
00:29:10,360 --> 00:29:13,000
Speaker 2: quite a bit of wood in the floor of my house,

533
00:29:13,560 --> 00:29:17,160
Speaker 2: and it costs them way more than they expected the

534
00:29:17,200 --> 00:29:21,000
Speaker 2: insurance company to even do the job. So I ended

535
00:29:21,120 --> 00:29:23,760
Speaker 2: up having to I don't even know how I navigated it,

536
00:29:23,800 --> 00:29:26,520
Speaker 2: but I had to pay extra money basically at that

537
00:29:26,640 --> 00:29:30,240
Speaker 2: time because of my deductible or whatever it was I had,

538
00:29:30,320 --> 00:29:32,760
Speaker 2: plus some other thing and I can't even remember, but

539
00:29:32,880 --> 00:29:35,560
Speaker 2: it was. It was because of those construction costs.

540
00:29:35,760 --> 00:29:37,520
Speaker 5: And the interesting thing too, is, like I think, I

541
00:29:37,600 --> 00:29:39,760
Speaker 5: see you guys are linked to this YouTube video on

542
00:29:40,280 --> 00:29:43,840
Speaker 5: building integrity, just a YouTube channel, and the guy that

543
00:29:44,040 --> 00:29:47,800
Speaker 5: I think runs that, he's like a consultant in cases

544
00:29:47,920 --> 00:29:51,280
Speaker 5: of insurance fraud, but you know, in terms of fraud

545
00:29:51,360 --> 00:29:54,760
Speaker 5: perpetrated by insurance companies. And one thing this dude pointed

546
00:29:54,760 --> 00:29:58,760
Speaker 5: out that I definitely verified is relatively common. Is this

547
00:29:58,840 --> 00:30:02,920
Speaker 5: idea that you know, since these are for profit organizations,

548
00:30:03,640 --> 00:30:07,400
Speaker 5: their money that they receive that are profits, they don't

549
00:30:07,400 --> 00:30:11,280
Speaker 5: necessarily even have to like put those aside in the

550
00:30:11,360 --> 00:30:13,840
Speaker 5: hopes that you know, like this is this is held

551
00:30:14,000 --> 00:30:16,479
Speaker 5: for you right where it's not like the same as escrower.

552
00:30:16,560 --> 00:30:19,400
Speaker 5: That's money that you pay through your mortgage company they

553
00:30:19,440 --> 00:30:21,600
Speaker 5: hold on to for you, and that then is you.

554
00:30:21,840 --> 00:30:24,760
Speaker 5: So the money that you pay your insurance company, they're

555
00:30:24,800 --> 00:30:28,080
Speaker 5: not like tucking that away. And there could come a

556
00:30:28,160 --> 00:30:31,920
Speaker 5: time where maybe so many claims are coming through that

557
00:30:31,960 --> 00:30:35,560
Speaker 5: the insurance company isn't profitable that year, but they only

558
00:30:35,600 --> 00:30:39,160
Speaker 5: apparently have to like balance the books in years where

559
00:30:39,200 --> 00:30:41,880
Speaker 5: they don't make their bottom line. So it's just a

560
00:30:42,080 --> 00:30:46,680
Speaker 5: really interesting balancing act because of this whole for profit

561
00:30:46,800 --> 00:30:49,200
Speaker 5: nature of it, and the fact of the matter is

562
00:30:49,240 --> 00:30:53,080
Speaker 5: it really just isn't designed to protect you. And there

563
00:30:53,080 --> 00:30:55,120
Speaker 5: were all these video clips I was watching of like

564
00:30:55,200 --> 00:30:59,320
Speaker 5: insurance adjusters coming out and hanging out with a roofer

565
00:30:59,480 --> 00:31:02,640
Speaker 5: who shown them that this roof needs to be replaced

566
00:31:02,880 --> 00:31:05,080
Speaker 5: by ripping out these shingles seeing see look the nail

567
00:31:05,080 --> 00:31:07,480
Speaker 5: holes here is all warm, and the insurance just is like, no,

568
00:31:07,600 --> 00:31:09,720
Speaker 5: you're being too aggressive with that. That's not how you

569
00:31:09,760 --> 00:31:11,160
Speaker 5: do that. You don't pull it, you don't rip the

570
00:31:11,240 --> 00:31:13,040
Speaker 5: nail out like that. You're not even trying.

571
00:31:13,160 --> 00:31:13,400
Speaker 2: Guy.

572
00:31:13,840 --> 00:31:17,400
Speaker 5: He's basically telling this professional roofer that he is not

573
00:31:17,720 --> 00:31:22,320
Speaker 5: approaching this with the desire to repair. Is he is

574
00:31:22,320 --> 00:31:25,440
Speaker 5: basically saying, you already have your mind made up. But

575
00:31:25,480 --> 00:31:27,880
Speaker 5: what the reality is is that the insurance just already

576
00:31:27,920 --> 00:31:30,120
Speaker 5: has his mind made up as to the fact that

577
00:31:30,160 --> 00:31:34,239
Speaker 5: this we will not repare replace this roof, even if

578
00:31:34,280 --> 00:31:37,920
Speaker 5: it's within the timeframe of when a roof should be replaced,

579
00:31:38,000 --> 00:31:40,000
Speaker 5: which is I think twenty five years or something like that.

580
00:31:40,360 --> 00:31:43,400
Speaker 5: And it's just fascinating because the point that the guy

581
00:31:43,440 --> 00:31:47,800
Speaker 5: on the YouTube channel made is that you could argue that, well,

582
00:31:47,840 --> 00:31:50,040
Speaker 5: they knew how old the roof was when they insured

583
00:31:50,080 --> 00:31:52,320
Speaker 5: the house, and if they weren't going to replace it

584
00:31:52,640 --> 00:31:55,680
Speaker 5: due to this storm damage, then that was what this

585
00:31:55,760 --> 00:31:57,840
Speaker 5: was relating to. Then they shouldn't have insured it in

586
00:31:57,840 --> 00:31:59,920
Speaker 5: the first place. But the fact is, when people in

587
00:32:00,080 --> 00:32:03,520
Speaker 5: sure you're home, they ask very vague questions. They want

588
00:32:03,520 --> 00:32:07,520
Speaker 5: that plausible deniability, right, They don't want to know everything

589
00:32:07,560 --> 00:32:09,840
Speaker 5: that's wrong with the house. That way, when something really

590
00:32:09,880 --> 00:32:12,760
Speaker 5: does go wrong, they can say, well, I wasn't really

591
00:32:12,760 --> 00:32:14,280
Speaker 5: covering of the terms of our agreement.

592
00:32:15,200 --> 00:32:18,560
Speaker 3: Could you describe your foundation in terms of vibes?

593
00:32:20,160 --> 00:32:22,800
Speaker 4: It really is that way more or less, because like

594
00:32:22,960 --> 00:32:23,920
Speaker 4: you know they ask you, these guys.

595
00:32:23,920 --> 00:32:26,400
Speaker 5: I literally applied for a new policy today because of

596
00:32:26,400 --> 00:32:28,120
Speaker 5: that issue I was talking about. I finally dealt with it,

597
00:32:28,360 --> 00:32:30,480
Speaker 5: and they're like, how old did your roof? I'm like, oh,

598
00:32:30,480 --> 00:32:31,840
Speaker 5: I could look it up. It and I just give

599
00:32:31,880 --> 00:32:35,960
Speaker 5: us a ballpark. I'm like, really, a ballpark that'll work

600
00:32:36,000 --> 00:32:39,320
Speaker 5: for you. That's a little sus isn't it. Because the

601
00:32:39,360 --> 00:32:42,320
Speaker 5: point is they'd prefer a ballpark, and they're doing almost

602
00:32:42,320 --> 00:32:42,800
Speaker 5: over the phone.

603
00:32:42,800 --> 00:32:43,920
Speaker 4: They haven't come to my house.

604
00:32:44,440 --> 00:32:46,840
Speaker 5: You'd think that they would inspect the home before agreeing

605
00:32:46,880 --> 00:32:49,480
Speaker 5: to ensure it. But that is a feature for them,

606
00:32:49,520 --> 00:32:52,280
Speaker 5: not a bug. The less they know, the better.

607
00:32:52,760 --> 00:32:55,600
Speaker 3: Honestly, a lot of ballparks don't even have roofs, to

608
00:32:55,640 --> 00:32:56,480
Speaker 3: be honest.

609
00:32:56,320 --> 00:32:57,920
Speaker 4: A lot of ballparks burned down.

610
00:32:58,720 --> 00:33:02,680
Speaker 2: Can you imagine the insurance on owning a ballpark, That's.

611
00:33:02,520 --> 00:33:03,040
Speaker 4: What I'm saying.

612
00:33:03,600 --> 00:33:06,440
Speaker 3: That's where you start to just think seriously about buying

613
00:33:06,480 --> 00:33:07,640
Speaker 3: the insurance company.

614
00:33:08,000 --> 00:33:10,440
Speaker 2: You know, yeah, yeah, yeah, But this.

615
00:33:10,520 --> 00:33:13,640
Speaker 3: Is and you know, another great example I think, to

616
00:33:13,840 --> 00:33:17,560
Speaker 3: a great comparison to Knowle's point, a terrifying one is

617
00:33:17,640 --> 00:33:21,080
Speaker 3: anybody who works in the medical industry, you've seen something

618
00:33:21,160 --> 00:33:25,480
Speaker 3: simpler when doctors or nurses say this person needs this

619
00:33:25,640 --> 00:33:29,000
Speaker 3: treatment and the insurance company comes back and says, ah,

620
00:33:31,520 --> 00:33:33,080
Speaker 3: that sounds like a luxury.

621
00:33:33,720 --> 00:33:36,000
Speaker 4: They don't really need that second long do they?

622
00:33:36,400 --> 00:33:39,400
Speaker 2: Oh, they they can totally pay for that if they

623
00:33:39,440 --> 00:33:39,760
Speaker 2: want to.

624
00:33:40,560 --> 00:33:40,920
Speaker 4: Yeah.

625
00:33:41,000 --> 00:33:44,440
Speaker 3: Yeah, they did describe the vibes of their kidney when

626
00:33:44,440 --> 00:33:48,120
Speaker 3: they signed up, so it's really on them. This is

627
00:33:48,720 --> 00:33:51,440
Speaker 3: I think this goes to another issue, and this is

628
00:33:51,480 --> 00:33:56,680
Speaker 3: a factor that is also a prime mover of the

629
00:33:56,800 --> 00:34:02,240
Speaker 3: home insurance crisis which we are entering. It's the obfuscation

630
00:34:02,920 --> 00:34:05,560
Speaker 3: because the scope of the problem was a big open

631
00:34:05,600 --> 00:34:08,080
Speaker 3: secret in the industry. But for a long time, it

632
00:34:08,120 --> 00:34:11,080
Speaker 3: was hard for the public to get information about this,

633
00:34:11,239 --> 00:34:15,200
Speaker 3: to get the full lay of the land, because insurance

634
00:34:15,239 --> 00:34:18,839
Speaker 3: companies were purposely hiding a lot of it. For a

635
00:34:18,960 --> 00:34:22,439
Speaker 3: very long time. It was a herculean effort to get

636
00:34:22,480 --> 00:34:25,680
Speaker 3: a look at the cost of insurance, the same insurance

637
00:34:25,760 --> 00:34:29,440
Speaker 3: policies in different parts of the United States, because the

638
00:34:29,560 --> 00:34:33,600
Speaker 3: private insurance companies didn't disclose that the same way like

639
00:34:33,640 --> 00:34:38,160
Speaker 3: a lot of streaming places won't give you their exact numbers.

640
00:34:38,480 --> 00:34:42,719
Speaker 3: That's their secret sauce, right, and you don't want you know,

641
00:34:42,840 --> 00:34:48,719
Speaker 3: you don't want Johnny Blue Jeans in Enied, Oklahoma or

642
00:34:48,800 --> 00:34:54,080
Speaker 3: wherever to learn that somebody else across the river somewhere

643
00:34:54,480 --> 00:34:57,560
Speaker 3: is paying much less for the same product.

644
00:34:57,960 --> 00:35:00,840
Speaker 5: Not to mention that some of these big players in

645
00:35:00,880 --> 00:35:03,440
Speaker 5: the insurance space, like the State Farms of the World

646
00:35:03,520 --> 00:35:06,439
Speaker 5: or whatever, they pretty much fall into that too big

647
00:35:06,480 --> 00:35:09,600
Speaker 5: to fail category. So if they ever did have a

648
00:35:09,600 --> 00:35:12,000
Speaker 5: bum year or maybe they had to pay out too much,

649
00:35:12,360 --> 00:35:15,000
Speaker 5: they're going to get a bail out, and then it's

650
00:35:15,080 --> 00:35:16,680
Speaker 5: like rinse and repeat kind of.

651
00:35:16,760 --> 00:35:19,120
Speaker 2: You know, So, how do we even know what we

652
00:35:19,320 --> 00:35:24,160
Speaker 2: know about how much insurance premiums cost on average, per state,

653
00:35:24,320 --> 00:35:28,920
Speaker 2: per region, per you know, even town. Well, we didn't

654
00:35:28,960 --> 00:35:32,240
Speaker 2: have There wasn't some group putting all those numbers together.

655
00:35:32,680 --> 00:35:34,800
Speaker 2: Kind of like how remember we when we looked into

656
00:35:35,960 --> 00:35:40,080
Speaker 2: murders and homicides and deaths in national parks and we

657
00:35:40,080 --> 00:35:42,560
Speaker 2: were trying to find in the missing like the number

658
00:35:42,600 --> 00:35:46,520
Speaker 2: of people. Nobody's out there collecting that data and putting

659
00:35:46,560 --> 00:35:49,359
Speaker 2: it in a spreadsheet and publishing it online somewhere or

660
00:35:49,400 --> 00:35:52,680
Speaker 2: in an article or journal. Nobody was doing that for

661
00:35:52,719 --> 00:35:56,719
Speaker 2: homeowners insurance either until a dude named Benjamin Keys. Oh

662
00:35:56,760 --> 00:35:59,160
Speaker 2: it's a ben it's one of the good ones. And

663
00:35:59,440 --> 00:36:02,560
Speaker 2: Benjamin Keys comes along. He was a professor of real

664
00:36:02,680 --> 00:36:06,720
Speaker 2: estate at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. And another

665
00:36:06,760 --> 00:36:10,279
Speaker 2: person named Philip Moulder. Oh my god, a Molder too, right,

666
00:36:10,719 --> 00:36:14,160
Speaker 2: that's awesome. Good to be Trio, Moulder and Keys got together.

667
00:36:15,000 --> 00:36:17,480
Speaker 2: Philip Moulder is a professor at the University of Wisconsin

668
00:36:17,520 --> 00:36:21,400
Speaker 2: School of Business. They got together and said, hey, let's

669
00:36:21,400 --> 00:36:24,040
Speaker 2: figure this stuff out, and we're going to tell you

670
00:36:24,080 --> 00:36:26,480
Speaker 2: what they figured out right after a word from our sponsor.

671
00:36:33,000 --> 00:36:38,319
Speaker 3: And we've returned. So we've already i think established just

672
00:36:38,640 --> 00:36:42,480
Speaker 3: objectively hear the facts level, there are dangerous things on

673
00:36:42,520 --> 00:36:48,120
Speaker 3: the horizon climate wise, both metaphorically and literally. And we

674
00:36:48,280 --> 00:36:52,080
Speaker 3: learned about the study by Keys of Molder that you

675
00:36:52,120 --> 00:36:55,480
Speaker 3: can read in full online thanks to a journalist named

676
00:36:55,560 --> 00:36:59,400
Speaker 3: Christopher Flavelle writing for the New York Times. And they

677
00:36:59,400 --> 00:37:03,560
Speaker 3: were saying, wait, why are home insurance rates distorted across

678
00:37:03,600 --> 00:37:06,120
Speaker 3: this grand country of ours? And they said, all right,

679
00:37:06,120 --> 00:37:09,880
Speaker 3: climate change drives it, right, it's me the heat, the

680
00:37:09,920 --> 00:37:14,120
Speaker 3: wildfires you were talking about, and old the flooding we're mentioning,

681
00:37:14,200 --> 00:37:17,480
Speaker 3: Matt the tornadoes. Of course, because part of this country

682
00:37:17,520 --> 00:37:21,040
Speaker 3: is called Tornado Alley. And in a previous conversation we

683
00:37:21,200 --> 00:37:24,800
Speaker 3: established how Tornado Alley is growing at a breakneck base

684
00:37:25,160 --> 00:37:29,560
Speaker 3: again literally, and this is a well established trend, but

685
00:37:29,680 --> 00:37:32,919
Speaker 3: it's not the whole story because it doesn't explain why

686
00:37:32,960 --> 00:37:36,560
Speaker 3: a small town like Enid, Oklahoma, would be one of

687
00:37:36,600 --> 00:37:40,120
Speaker 3: the most expensive places in the country to have home

688
00:37:40,200 --> 00:37:43,960
Speaker 3: insurance relative to the actual value of your house. This

689
00:37:44,160 --> 00:37:46,759
Speaker 3: is where we see what Keys and Molder do. They

690
00:37:46,880 --> 00:37:50,440
Speaker 3: teamed up with a group called core Logic. Core Logic

691
00:37:51,400 --> 00:37:55,239
Speaker 3: is another like hardcore and I say this with great

692
00:37:55,239 --> 00:37:59,120
Speaker 3: respect nerd outfit. You know, they're math wizards. Their Property

693
00:37:59,120 --> 00:38:02,839
Speaker 3: Information and Analytics group, and they get a lot of

694
00:38:02,920 --> 00:38:06,640
Speaker 3: info from mortgage servicers. So if you own a home,

695
00:38:07,160 --> 00:38:09,960
Speaker 3: you pay, you know, into your ESCRO account, and groups

696
00:38:10,000 --> 00:38:13,680
Speaker 3: like core Logic get the information about what you're paid.

697
00:38:13,800 --> 00:38:16,960
Speaker 3: And they got the data for about twelve point four

698
00:38:17,280 --> 00:38:22,240
Speaker 3: million what we call owner occupied households, so not people

699
00:38:22,880 --> 00:38:26,080
Speaker 3: flip in airbnbs, you know, none of the black rock stuff,

700
00:38:26,239 --> 00:38:29,359
Speaker 3: people who live in the homes that they own. And

701
00:38:29,440 --> 00:38:33,520
Speaker 3: then Keys and Malta did some really clever They went

702
00:38:33,640 --> 00:38:38,080
Speaker 3: into these Escro accounts. They did some fancy financial forensics,

703
00:38:38,440 --> 00:38:42,360
Speaker 3: and they managed to estimate what each household paid for

704
00:38:42,719 --> 00:38:47,680
Speaker 3: property insurance. And then they found that, yes, there's a

705
00:38:47,719 --> 00:38:52,479
Speaker 3: relationship between climate risk and what companies charge, but it's

706
00:38:52,560 --> 00:38:58,920
Speaker 3: not all the same. It doesn't explain the discrepancy. Higher

707
00:38:58,960 --> 00:39:04,719
Speaker 3: premiums are charged in every state where regulators don't ask

708
00:39:04,760 --> 00:39:09,640
Speaker 3: as many questions from the company. Oh in other words,

709
00:39:09,760 --> 00:39:12,920
Speaker 3: and oh is right. In other words, states with rubber

710
00:39:13,000 --> 00:39:17,520
Speaker 3: stamp regulators serve the customers up to these private industries

711
00:39:17,800 --> 00:39:20,640
Speaker 3: on a platter. And I would pose it that it's

712
00:39:20,680 --> 00:39:22,359
Speaker 3: not going to be tough for us to find some

713
00:39:22,440 --> 00:39:26,680
Speaker 3: revolving door situations where you know, you might work as

714
00:39:26,719 --> 00:39:29,680
Speaker 3: a regulator and then later you get a plumb job

715
00:39:30,120 --> 00:39:31,439
Speaker 3: for some of the prior.

716
00:39:31,560 --> 00:39:38,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, dude, that's that's exactly what was found in Texas. Look,

717
00:39:39,600 --> 00:39:42,080
Speaker 2: it's kind of a known thing. Texas is a state

718
00:39:42,120 --> 00:39:46,640
Speaker 2: where regulations are frowned upon a little bit in general,

719
00:39:46,960 --> 00:39:50,520
Speaker 2: not fully, but you know, let's say they're minimized on

720
00:39:50,640 --> 00:39:57,280
Speaker 2: purpose in Texas. Unlike especially in California, when an insurance

721
00:39:57,320 --> 00:40:00,759
Speaker 2: company wants to raise a rate, they we kind of

722
00:40:00,800 --> 00:40:03,759
Speaker 2: get to just do that and then they get to

723
00:40:04,160 --> 00:40:10,399
Speaker 2: ask for forgiveness later rather than asking permission upfront. In California, though,

724
00:40:10,640 --> 00:40:12,919
Speaker 2: if you want to raise rates as an all state

725
00:40:13,000 --> 00:40:15,319
Speaker 2: or whatever you know company, you are a state farm.

726
00:40:15,680 --> 00:40:17,719
Speaker 2: If you want to raise rates, you have to go

727
00:40:17,800 --> 00:40:22,560
Speaker 2: to California to a government body and say, hey, here,

728
00:40:22,719 --> 00:40:24,799
Speaker 2: for X, Y and Z, we need to raise our

729
00:40:25,000 --> 00:40:28,160
Speaker 2: home insurance premiums, you know, on average or whatever.

730
00:40:28,239 --> 00:40:30,239
Speaker 5: So you'd have to make your case with like the

731
00:40:30,920 --> 00:40:35,200
Speaker 5: increased prevalence of natural disasters and certain areas and tie

732
00:40:35,239 --> 00:40:39,000
Speaker 5: it to specific events and say this is why we need.

733
00:40:38,880 --> 00:40:39,319
Speaker 4: To do this.

734
00:40:39,920 --> 00:40:45,560
Speaker 2: Yes, but in Texas you've got something called the Department

735
00:40:45,640 --> 00:40:48,880
Speaker 2: of Insurance that takes a look at stuff. It approves

736
00:40:48,920 --> 00:40:51,800
Speaker 2: the rates, but it takes a look at about half

737
00:40:51,840 --> 00:40:55,880
Speaker 2: of the rate increases that happen every year from homeowner's

738
00:40:56,000 --> 00:40:56,920
Speaker 2: insurance companies.

739
00:40:56,920 --> 00:41:01,720
Speaker 5: So that's the rubber stamping we were talking about, right, Yeah, Yeah.

740
00:41:01,480 --> 00:41:03,640
Speaker 3: I don't want to again, as we said, I don't

741
00:41:03,640 --> 00:41:08,040
Speaker 3: want tom malign people unfairly, but it's it's giving big

742
00:41:08,640 --> 00:41:11,920
Speaker 3: golf game conversation energy out there in Texas.

743
00:41:12,040 --> 00:41:14,920
Speaker 2: Yes, you know what I mean, Yes, and I misspoke.

744
00:41:15,120 --> 00:41:16,839
Speaker 2: They don't look at half of them. They look at

745
00:41:16,880 --> 00:41:21,400
Speaker 2: all of them presumably, but they approve roughly half of them.

746
00:41:21,440 --> 00:41:24,040
Speaker 2: Just like, yeah, definitely, you guys can raise.

747
00:41:23,880 --> 00:41:28,279
Speaker 5: Rates, And is there an appeal process from the consumers perspective? Like,

748
00:41:28,320 --> 00:41:32,400
Speaker 5: I know, for example, you can dispute property tax increases.

749
00:41:32,719 --> 00:41:34,560
Speaker 5: There is a whole system in place for that, at

750
00:41:34,640 --> 00:41:37,640
Speaker 5: least here in Georgia. But what about with the insurance rates?

751
00:41:37,920 --> 00:41:40,680
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, in Texas there is one thing, you guys.

752
00:41:40,840 --> 00:41:44,480
Speaker 2: In nineteen ninety one, the Texas State Legislature made a

753
00:41:44,520 --> 00:41:48,680
Speaker 2: thing called Public Insurance Council or the Public Insurance Council,

754
00:41:48,920 --> 00:41:53,080
Speaker 2: and they represent the interests of consumers and they attempt

755
00:41:53,200 --> 00:41:56,440
Speaker 2: to maintain a quote, at least according to this article

756
00:41:56,680 --> 00:41:59,799
Speaker 2: written by Michael Hardy in Texas Monthly, they attempt to

757
00:42:00,280 --> 00:42:02,200
Speaker 2: a balanced marketplace.

758
00:42:03,520 --> 00:42:04,800
Speaker 4: You're saying it in a way or I don't know

759
00:42:04,840 --> 00:42:06,560
Speaker 4: if you believe that that's what actually happened.

760
00:42:06,600 --> 00:42:08,920
Speaker 3: I heard, well, I heard italics.

761
00:42:09,200 --> 00:42:12,239
Speaker 2: Mike. Michael put it in quotations in his.

762
00:42:12,360 --> 00:42:15,919
Speaker 5: Arr italics voice too, Matt to be fair, No, it's

763
00:42:15,960 --> 00:42:19,680
Speaker 5: it does seem sure, it's a good cover story.

764
00:42:20,160 --> 00:42:21,800
Speaker 4: It's good for optics to say.

765
00:42:21,600 --> 00:42:24,400
Speaker 5: No, no, no, no, we have this sub committee or whatever

766
00:42:24,440 --> 00:42:26,560
Speaker 5: that's looking out for the best interest in the consumer.

767
00:42:26,880 --> 00:42:28,600
Speaker 5: But it would seem to me that they do a

768
00:42:28,600 --> 00:42:31,000
Speaker 5: bit of rubber stamping themselves, or at least I haven't

769
00:42:31,000 --> 00:42:34,000
Speaker 5: heard of any much coming out of this short of

770
00:42:34,040 --> 00:42:36,600
Speaker 5: a couple of like publicity grabs.

771
00:42:36,640 --> 00:42:38,359
Speaker 4: Maybe I don't know. Tell me what you guys think.

772
00:42:38,880 --> 00:42:41,359
Speaker 3: Well, there are also valid points which I guess we're

773
00:42:42,360 --> 00:42:45,960
Speaker 3: ethically required to mention, and those valid points would be

774
00:42:46,280 --> 00:42:49,960
Speaker 3: from their perspective. There would be arguments like, hey, people

775
00:42:50,040 --> 00:42:53,440
Speaker 3: do need home insurance, right, so let's work with these entities.

776
00:42:53,640 --> 00:42:58,319
Speaker 3: And then another one would probably be the kind of

777
00:42:58,480 --> 00:43:02,160
Speaker 3: iron hand and velvet gloves of argument that happens so often,

778
00:43:02,320 --> 00:43:08,200
Speaker 3: which is, we bring a lot of business to this state, right,

779
00:43:08,400 --> 00:43:11,240
Speaker 3: or we as an industry employ a lot of people,

780
00:43:11,960 --> 00:43:15,960
Speaker 3: which can be true but can also be an implicit threat.

781
00:43:16,520 --> 00:43:16,800
Speaker 4: Yep.

782
00:43:17,160 --> 00:43:21,680
Speaker 2: And there's a third perspective, get on YouTube and learn carpentry, dude,

783
00:43:22,080 --> 00:43:27,000
Speaker 2: except I would never follow that. I wish I could

784
00:43:27,000 --> 00:43:32,359
Speaker 2: repair stuff. You can learn anything homeowners.

785
00:43:33,960 --> 00:43:37,560
Speaker 3: Right, right, I don't know. It's I love that you're

786
00:43:37,560 --> 00:43:42,040
Speaker 3: bringing up this example because the effects of these state

787
00:43:42,120 --> 00:43:46,680
Speaker 3: by state regulatory differences. Right, You're in a California, and

788
00:43:46,760 --> 00:43:50,080
Speaker 3: it asks and we're not saying California is perfect by

789
00:43:50,120 --> 00:43:54,720
Speaker 3: any means, but you're in a state where regulation has teeth,

790
00:43:54,960 --> 00:43:57,520
Speaker 3: and you are required to come with some facts, to

791
00:43:57,600 --> 00:44:01,239
Speaker 3: come with some quantitative data that shows the necessity of

792
00:44:01,280 --> 00:44:03,439
Speaker 3: a thing, right, because they don't want you to leave

793
00:44:03,480 --> 00:44:06,520
Speaker 3: either as an insurance company. They don't want those companies

794
00:44:06,520 --> 00:44:10,000
Speaker 3: to leave. But then if you go to places with

795
00:44:10,280 --> 00:44:14,480
Speaker 3: much more lax or compromised regulation, then you see that

796
00:44:14,719 --> 00:44:18,640
Speaker 3: there is a huge discrepancy. You can go into this

797
00:44:18,680 --> 00:44:21,680
Speaker 3: New York Times article. You can see the discrepancy in

798
00:44:21,719 --> 00:44:25,960
Speaker 3: these pretty clever infographics wherein you can plug in like

799
00:44:26,000 --> 00:44:28,040
Speaker 3: you can look at your own zip code or your

800
00:44:28,040 --> 00:44:33,280
Speaker 3: own county and you'll see how weird this stuff goes.

801
00:44:33,560 --> 00:44:37,120
Speaker 3: That is the reason the average premium has jumped thirty

802
00:44:37,200 --> 00:44:40,400
Speaker 3: three percent in just three years, much higher than the

803
00:44:40,480 --> 00:44:43,840
Speaker 3: rate of inflation from twenty twenty twenty twenty three. The

804
00:44:43,920 --> 00:44:46,719
Speaker 3: system is unfair. You could live in this place with

805
00:44:46,800 --> 00:44:49,760
Speaker 3: the same amount of risk regents, with the same amount

806
00:44:49,800 --> 00:44:54,160
Speaker 3: of weather, the same chance for you know, a disastrous event,

807
00:44:54,560 --> 00:44:58,040
Speaker 3: and you might pay a wildly different rate because some

808
00:44:58,239 --> 00:45:00,600
Speaker 3: you might be in a place where the regulator sometimes

809
00:45:00,640 --> 00:45:05,759
Speaker 3: do their job or sometimes don't. Dang, we've got a

810
00:45:05,760 --> 00:45:09,080
Speaker 3: little lag because I'm recording on the road here. But

811
00:45:09,200 --> 00:45:11,840
Speaker 3: just to be clear, that pause was purposeful. I was

812
00:45:11,880 --> 00:45:12,560
Speaker 3: going for like a.

813
00:45:12,560 --> 00:45:16,160
Speaker 4: Dramatic thing, but pregnant pause a pp.

814
00:45:17,800 --> 00:45:21,600
Speaker 2: Pp And Ben, you found another quote from that same

815
00:45:21,600 --> 00:45:27,120
Speaker 2: New York Times article that is unfortunate.

816
00:45:27,760 --> 00:45:29,960
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's a little long, but I think it's

817
00:45:30,000 --> 00:45:33,040
Speaker 3: worth I think it's worth hearing. Should we round robin it?

818
00:45:33,400 --> 00:45:37,080
Speaker 4: Absolutely? Across the more than nine thousand zip codes for

819
00:45:37,120 --> 00:45:40,680
Speaker 4: which data was available, the typical American household last year

820
00:45:40,680 --> 00:45:43,719
Speaker 4: paid about five hundred dollars in home insurance premiums for

821
00:45:43,800 --> 00:45:47,680
Speaker 4: every one hundred thousand dollars of home value, or zero

822
00:45:47,680 --> 00:45:50,360
Speaker 4: point five percent, the professors found.

823
00:45:50,520 --> 00:45:54,440
Speaker 2: But in California, which suffered through more than seven thousand

824
00:45:54,520 --> 00:45:59,399
Speaker 2: wildfires last year, good Lord, the typical homeowner in many

825
00:45:59,520 --> 00:46:03,360
Speaker 2: zip codes paid premiums as low as point zero five

826
00:46:03,480 --> 00:46:04,920
Speaker 2: percent of home value.

827
00:46:05,239 --> 00:46:10,480
Speaker 3: By contrast, the quote concludes in parts of Alabama, Oklahoma, Louisiana,

828
00:46:10,520 --> 00:46:14,600
Speaker 3: and Texas, the average homeowner faced home insurance premiums greater

829
00:46:14,719 --> 00:46:18,359
Speaker 3: than two percent of the value of local homes. Now

830
00:46:18,560 --> 00:46:21,399
Speaker 3: zero point five point h five two percent. They may

831
00:46:21,440 --> 00:46:24,399
Speaker 3: sound like small numbers until we realize we're talking about

832
00:46:24,440 --> 00:46:28,000
Speaker 3: percentages of hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars.

833
00:46:28,160 --> 00:46:32,400
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, and think about the vast differences in average

834
00:46:32,440 --> 00:46:36,200
Speaker 2: home value there that are represented in a ton of

835
00:46:36,239 --> 00:46:39,239
Speaker 2: homes in Louisiana versus a ton of homes in California.

836
00:46:39,760 --> 00:46:42,200
Speaker 2: I don't want to sparage any homes in Louisiana. It's

837
00:46:42,200 --> 00:46:45,560
Speaker 2: just you imagine the amount of wealth and money that

838
00:46:45,760 --> 00:46:50,160
Speaker 2: goes out into many parts of California and the types

839
00:46:50,200 --> 00:46:54,040
Speaker 2: of homes that are built, and the price increases in

840
00:46:54,080 --> 00:46:56,600
Speaker 2: home value that have been happening out there.

841
00:46:56,840 --> 00:47:00,960
Speaker 5: Well, I know we're largely kind of during this conversation

842
00:47:01,040 --> 00:47:03,920
Speaker 5: around the climate change angle, but I did just want

843
00:47:03,960 --> 00:47:07,080
Speaker 5: to just give a tiny quick conclusion to my kind

844
00:47:07,120 --> 00:47:11,800
Speaker 5: of home insurance odyssey. After looking at this research and

845
00:47:12,080 --> 00:47:15,239
Speaker 5: preparing for this podcast today this morning, I kind of

846
00:47:15,960 --> 00:47:17,960
Speaker 5: lit a little bit of a fire under me to

847
00:47:18,080 --> 00:47:21,600
Speaker 5: take care of this and stop overpaying for my homeowner's

848
00:47:21,600 --> 00:47:24,520
Speaker 5: insurance policy that my mortgage just took it upon themselves

849
00:47:24,560 --> 00:47:28,120
Speaker 5: assign me up for. And I received quotes from four

850
00:47:28,680 --> 00:47:31,839
Speaker 5: different companies, including the company that I get my.

851
00:47:31,840 --> 00:47:35,719
Speaker 4: Car insurance through and they were just all over the place.

852
00:47:35,480 --> 00:47:38,319
Speaker 5: And there's a formulaic way that they ask you these

853
00:47:38,400 --> 00:47:41,120
Speaker 5: questions and it's like literally to dictate it, I'm sure

854
00:47:41,160 --> 00:47:45,880
Speaker 5: by legal legal ees and regulations, and it ultimately the

855
00:47:45,920 --> 00:47:48,200
Speaker 5: thing they tell you upfront is this is the cost

856
00:47:48,560 --> 00:47:51,200
Speaker 5: that we assess it would cost to rebuild your home,

857
00:47:51,680 --> 00:47:55,920
Speaker 5: and that number you guys from four different organizations, completely

858
00:47:55,920 --> 00:47:59,640
Speaker 5: different number, completely different number, and the kind of boilerplate

859
00:47:59,680 --> 00:48:04,000
Speaker 5: cover they thought that I needed also completely different, and

860
00:48:04,120 --> 00:48:08,319
Speaker 5: the deductibles also completely different. And it was really eye

861
00:48:08,320 --> 00:48:12,239
Speaker 5: opening for me, how like if I'm a total you know,

862
00:48:12,360 --> 00:48:14,800
Speaker 5: nube with this stuff, and I definitely am not armed

863
00:48:15,360 --> 00:48:18,120
Speaker 5: a little more so now, but not to the degree

864
00:48:18,160 --> 00:48:20,080
Speaker 5: that maybe someone who does this stuff for a living

865
00:48:20,840 --> 00:48:23,600
Speaker 5: with the right questions or and I honestly it's so

866
00:48:23,760 --> 00:48:26,319
Speaker 5: mandatory that I just don't know how much that would

867
00:48:26,320 --> 00:48:28,240
Speaker 5: even help. And I was just to MAT's point earlier

868
00:48:28,239 --> 00:48:30,319
Speaker 5: in the episode, I was just satisfied with getting my

869
00:48:30,360 --> 00:48:32,960
Speaker 5: payment down by a couple hundred bucks a month and

870
00:48:33,000 --> 00:48:35,080
Speaker 5: just to move on with it, because they just browbeat

871
00:48:35,120 --> 00:48:37,279
Speaker 5: you with this stuff and you're almost left like in

872
00:48:37,320 --> 00:48:39,800
Speaker 5: this submissive state where you're.

873
00:48:39,680 --> 00:48:41,799
Speaker 4: Like, please just make it go away, Please just make

874
00:48:41,840 --> 00:48:42,440
Speaker 4: it go away.

875
00:48:42,760 --> 00:48:44,799
Speaker 5: And that's how I'm honestly get a little choked up

876
00:48:44,800 --> 00:48:46,640
Speaker 5: talking about it in a weird way, because it is

877
00:48:46,680 --> 00:48:51,600
Speaker 5: like emotional abuse in a way, you know, because you're like,

878
00:48:51,680 --> 00:48:54,120
Speaker 5: am I am I complying? Am I complying? As long

879
00:48:54,160 --> 00:48:57,080
Speaker 5: as I'm complying, you know? And I just was left

880
00:48:57,120 --> 00:48:59,200
Speaker 5: with yeah, And I ultimately went with State Farm. And

881
00:48:59,239 --> 00:49:00,960
Speaker 5: you know why I went with because it was cheaper

882
00:49:01,120 --> 00:49:03,080
Speaker 5: and the guy was kind of nice and didn't sound

883
00:49:03,120 --> 00:49:06,120
Speaker 5: like a dead eyed robot. And I got a better

884
00:49:06,120 --> 00:49:08,400
Speaker 5: car insurance rate too, so I bundled. But even that

885
00:49:08,440 --> 00:49:10,400
Speaker 5: stuff we haven't talked about. They'll be like, oh, we'll

886
00:49:10,440 --> 00:49:12,600
Speaker 5: give you thirty percent off on your homeowners if you

887
00:49:12,640 --> 00:49:13,760
Speaker 5: bundle your car.

888
00:49:14,640 --> 00:49:15,800
Speaker 4: What up with that, y'all.

889
00:49:16,120 --> 00:49:20,760
Speaker 3: Whenever somebody gives you a margin that large off, they're

890
00:49:20,800 --> 00:49:24,280
Speaker 3: also giving you a sneak into how big their profit

891
00:49:24,360 --> 00:49:27,439
Speaker 3: margin is to begin with. And you should always this

892
00:49:27,480 --> 00:49:32,239
Speaker 3: is very this very I don't want to come off

893
00:49:32,800 --> 00:49:35,359
Speaker 3: be a stereotype of myself, but this is also part

894
00:49:35,400 --> 00:49:39,239
Speaker 3: of the reason why you should always check your car insurance.

895
00:49:39,560 --> 00:49:42,640
Speaker 3: You should check every bill you have to pay regularly,

896
00:49:43,080 --> 00:49:46,959
Speaker 3: because if you don't, it will just continue to kind

897
00:49:46,960 --> 00:49:49,800
Speaker 3: of hitch its pants up as a bigger and bigger

898
00:49:49,840 --> 00:49:53,480
Speaker 3: slice of your budget because people are counting on you

899
00:49:53,520 --> 00:49:56,760
Speaker 3: to not care. They're counting on you to not dive

900
00:49:56,880 --> 00:50:00,560
Speaker 3: into that boring stuff. It's boring on purpose, you know

901
00:50:00,600 --> 00:50:03,480
Speaker 3: what I mean. And again, it's the system, it's not

902
00:50:03,600 --> 00:50:08,440
Speaker 3: the individuals. Look, we know here in the US alone,

903
00:50:08,719 --> 00:50:12,440
Speaker 3: thirty nine million different properties are vulnerable to one or

904
00:50:12,480 --> 00:50:16,520
Speaker 3: more types of disasters. We know that about ten point

905
00:50:16,640 --> 00:50:20,320
Speaker 3: seven million Americans right now live in a county where

906
00:50:20,400 --> 00:50:23,640
Speaker 3: one hundred percent of the homes are vulnerable to that

907
00:50:24,640 --> 00:50:28,160
Speaker 3: insurance correction. And those places tend to be less wealthy.

908
00:50:28,360 --> 00:50:30,960
Speaker 3: They're less equipped to fight for their rights, you know,

909
00:50:31,120 --> 00:50:34,719
Speaker 3: to do something. We're talking about our group text, you know,

910
00:50:34,840 --> 00:50:38,320
Speaker 3: to get the lawyers to be able to take something

911
00:50:38,360 --> 00:50:44,040
Speaker 3: to court when things are getting shisty. I mean it's

912
00:50:44,080 --> 00:50:47,760
Speaker 3: going to it's going to expand, just like Tornado Alley.

913
00:50:48,080 --> 00:50:50,520
Speaker 3: And also a bit of empathy, as weird as it

914
00:50:50,520 --> 00:50:53,719
Speaker 3: may sound, for those insurance companies, if they can't make

915
00:50:53,719 --> 00:50:57,239
Speaker 3: a profit, they can't exist either. So from their perspective,

916
00:50:57,800 --> 00:51:01,160
Speaker 3: this is not about necessarily screwing people over. It's an

917
00:51:01,160 --> 00:51:04,720
Speaker 3: existential threat, you know what I mean. You can't sell

918
00:51:05,719 --> 00:51:09,880
Speaker 3: flood insurance if you know for sure the entire place

919
00:51:09,960 --> 00:51:12,279
Speaker 3: is going to flood several times a year.

920
00:51:12,880 --> 00:51:16,279
Speaker 2: No, that's why. You know, what is it? The five

921
00:51:16,360 --> 00:51:19,879
Speaker 2: hundred year Floodplaine or whatever is a thing because there's

922
00:51:19,880 --> 00:51:22,719
Speaker 2: some risk there. Buzz, five hundred years come.

923
00:51:22,640 --> 00:51:26,840
Speaker 3: On, right, by which time I'll be retired, you know,

924
00:51:27,200 --> 00:51:30,960
Speaker 3: out in Sioux Falls. I don't know why I'm referencing

925
00:51:31,000 --> 00:51:33,840
Speaker 3: Sioux Falls. I think it's a please don't destroy sketch.

926
00:51:34,520 --> 00:51:34,960
Speaker 3: You guys don't.

927
00:51:35,040 --> 00:51:39,600
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I love those guys. I really quickly got

928
00:51:39,680 --> 00:51:45,239
Speaker 2: I found this. Apparently Vermont has a super low homeowner's

929
00:51:45,480 --> 00:51:48,799
Speaker 2: insurance average. It was like seven hundred and ninety nine

930
00:51:48,880 --> 00:51:52,640
Speaker 2: dollars average or something in Vermont. And there are lovely

931
00:51:52,680 --> 00:51:57,960
Speaker 2: homes out there. Let's go to Vermont, benas country.

932
00:51:58,520 --> 00:51:59,920
Speaker 3: Why don't we go to the country.

933
00:52:00,440 --> 00:52:05,319
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't even know what's out there, leaves no.

934
00:52:05,520 --> 00:52:06,440
Speaker 4: Name the other draft.

935
00:52:07,160 --> 00:52:09,600
Speaker 5: It's probably a good, probably be good for our mental health, y'all.

936
00:52:09,800 --> 00:52:12,040
Speaker 5: I don't even know they got the internet in Vermont, y'all.

937
00:52:12,120 --> 00:52:15,360
Speaker 5: Everyone's so mentally healthy and spry out there and just

938
00:52:15,880 --> 00:52:17,680
Speaker 5: noodling on a banjo on a front.

939
00:52:17,400 --> 00:52:18,719
Speaker 4: Porch with a weed in their mouth.

940
00:52:19,719 --> 00:52:22,040
Speaker 3: Sanders, is there still like.

941
00:52:22,360 --> 00:52:24,040
Speaker 4: Kicking it on the regular? Yeah?

942
00:52:24,200 --> 00:52:26,719
Speaker 2: Oh hey, quick breaking news. I know we were talking

943
00:52:26,760 --> 00:52:30,479
Speaker 2: about Vermont, but just talking about climate change with talking

944
00:52:30,520 --> 00:52:34,120
Speaker 2: about disasters. I'm reading right here on ABC News that

945
00:52:34,239 --> 00:52:39,000
Speaker 2: as we were recording a four point four magnitude earthquake

946
00:52:39,440 --> 00:52:40,239
Speaker 2: Los Angeles.

947
00:52:40,600 --> 00:52:42,320
Speaker 3: Yeah, California happened.

948
00:52:42,400 --> 00:52:42,600
Speaker 4: Yeah.

949
00:52:42,960 --> 00:52:45,719
Speaker 3: Actually one of our what I learned about, one of

950
00:52:45,760 --> 00:52:50,680
Speaker 3: our old colleagues or former colleagues reported it apparently very

951
00:52:51,440 --> 00:52:55,200
Speaker 3: very scary stuff. Also, the you know, the ring of

952
00:52:55,239 --> 00:53:00,319
Speaker 3: fire is awakening. Is the problem the tectonic it's a

953
00:53:00,320 --> 00:53:03,719
Speaker 3: cool name for the tectonic plate sensitivity around the Pacific,

954
00:53:03,880 --> 00:53:14,600
Speaker 3: rim typhoons, earthquakes, It's all happening. Stay safe, Yeah, stay safe,

955
00:53:15,120 --> 00:53:18,719
Speaker 3: and also let us know this larger question. I'm glad

956
00:53:18,719 --> 00:53:21,640
Speaker 3: you got the breaking news for us there, Matt, because

957
00:53:21,640 --> 00:53:24,640
Speaker 3: this does bring to mind a larger question. Disasters are

958
00:53:24,680 --> 00:53:30,239
Speaker 3: becoming more frequent, less predictable, expanding to touch places previously

959
00:53:30,320 --> 00:53:34,200
Speaker 3: considered safe, while also growing in severity. So where can

960
00:53:34,360 --> 00:53:37,440
Speaker 3: people go for safety? What will the world look like

961
00:53:37,560 --> 00:53:42,319
Speaker 3: beyond insurance, right beyond the financial stuff. Existentially, what is

962
00:53:42,360 --> 00:53:44,520
Speaker 3: this planet going to look like? Not just next year,

963
00:53:44,880 --> 00:53:48,280
Speaker 3: but within the next decade. Let us know, and also

964
00:53:48,320 --> 00:53:52,719
Speaker 3: tell us your homeowner war stories. If you are a contractor,

965
00:53:52,760 --> 00:53:55,000
Speaker 3: we got a lot of contractors in the audience tonight.

966
00:53:55,800 --> 00:53:56,359
Speaker 4: Tell us the.

967
00:53:56,320 --> 00:54:00,520
Speaker 3: Weirdest conversations you've had with an adjuster. I love to

968
00:54:00,600 --> 00:54:03,719
Speaker 3: hear from you. We try to be easy to find online.

969
00:54:03,760 --> 00:54:04,279
Speaker 4: That's right.

970
00:54:04,360 --> 00:54:06,160
Speaker 5: You can find this at the handle Conspiracy Stuff where

971
00:54:06,160 --> 00:54:08,399
Speaker 5: we exist on Facebook where we have a Facebook group

972
00:54:08,440 --> 00:54:10,960
Speaker 5: Here's where it gets crazy, on YouTube, where we have

973
00:54:11,040 --> 00:54:15,080
Speaker 5: video content coming at you on the regular, and on axfka, Twitter,

974
00:54:15,239 --> 00:54:16,560
Speaker 5: on Instagram and TikTok.

975
00:54:16,600 --> 00:54:18,160
Speaker 4: We are Conspiracy Stuff Show.

976
00:54:18,440 --> 00:54:21,560
Speaker 2: We have a phone number. It is one eight three

977
00:54:21,680 --> 00:54:27,040
Speaker 2: three STDWYTK. When you call in, you've got three minutes

978
00:54:27,080 --> 00:54:29,520
Speaker 2: to leave a voicemail. Please do give yourself a cool

979
00:54:29,600 --> 00:54:31,600
Speaker 2: nickname and let us know if we can use that

980
00:54:31,760 --> 00:54:34,279
Speaker 2: name and your message on one of our listener mail

981
00:54:34,320 --> 00:54:36,880
Speaker 2: episodes or anywhere else. And if you've got more to

982
00:54:36,920 --> 00:54:39,320
Speaker 2: say then can fit in that voicemail. Why not instead

983
00:54:39,400 --> 00:54:41,160
Speaker 2: send us a good old fashioned email.

984
00:54:41,440 --> 00:54:45,000
Speaker 3: We are the entities that read every piece of correspondence

985
00:54:45,080 --> 00:54:50,600
Speaker 3: we receive, be aware, but unafree. Sometimes the void rights back.

986
00:54:51,560 --> 00:54:54,680
Speaker 3: Quick note here, folks, the audio quality may be a

987
00:54:54,719 --> 00:54:58,359
Speaker 3: little bit different for a few weeks. Some of us

988
00:54:58,440 --> 00:55:02,600
Speaker 3: are nomadic, but we are going to keep the lights

989
00:55:02,640 --> 00:55:05,920
Speaker 3: on here and to do that we need your help.

990
00:55:06,480 --> 00:55:09,080
Speaker 3: So give us a shout in the dark. Conspiracy at

991
00:55:09,080 --> 00:55:28,960
Speaker 3: iHeartRadio dot com.

992
00:55:29,120 --> 00:55:31,200
Speaker 2: Stuff they Don't want you to know is a production

993
00:55:31,280 --> 00:55:35,840
Speaker 2: of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

994
00:55:35,920 --> 00:55:39,120
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.