We’re still set to close Dec. 22nd on House #3, with very few hiccups so far. Amazing how deals seem to go oh so much more smoothly when it’s a cash deal and no mortgage lenders or loan agents or underwriters are involved. Now if I could just find a way to eliminate plumbers from the equation as well, we’d have a massiviely efficient, well-oiled machine…

Despite my best efforts, I ended up going with our current agent at Allstate for the builders risk insurance policy on House #3. It’s a weird situation, as our agent is based in Austin and I have only good things to say about him, but he’s no longer just down the street now that we live out in the sticks, so I was hoping to shift new insurance stuff to a local agent. Tried two different insurance agencies, one couldn’t figure out how to return a phone call and the other seemed a go, getting me a quote on a builders risk policy and seemingly ready to roll, only to suddenly back out when I wasn’t willing to shift all of my existing insurance policies to them.

So it was back to our current insurance agent, who again, is very awesome, cool, and a pleasure to work with. The problem, though, is his secretary is like 90 years old, and she ALWAYS (and I mean ALWAYS) nearly causes doom to rain down on my head. Unintentionally, to be fair, but something ALWAYS goes wrong when I’m setting up or cancelling a policy I no longer need. No matter how clearly I explain it and create diagrams and hire planes trailing banners to tell her exactly what needs to be done, the exact opposite always almost happens.

 If I’ve sold a property and no longer need insurance on it, the policy that nearly gets cancelled is the coverage on our primary residence, even after pointedly asking her nineteen times to make sure she understood what we needed or didn’t. And so on. This time around she asked me if the agent had done a builder’s risk for me before, and I said yes, that the last house I renovated and sold (House #2) was done with a builders risk policy.

She then took it upon herself to make the leap that I was somehow talking about our current rental property (House #1) instead, and started to cancel coverage on it, working on the logic (I’m guessing) that people just have one house, so if I mentioned recently selling a house (and it was’t the one I live in), it must be the rental policy that was on our account, which I surely didn’t need anymore, having sold the house.

Face palm.

But we finally got everything sorted out, and are good to go. The policy itself was a bit more expensive than I’d hoped ($400 for 6 months of coverage) but the deductible is lower than some other policies at $250. One concern with this project is the less-than-spectacular neighborhood and the fact that it’s located in what’s essentially a cul-de-sac with only one entrance, so it’s secluded, with a wooded creek area running behind the property.  Builders risk policies work well for situations like that where you might have break-ins or materials walking off overnight, and obviously the lower the deductible the better, if you’re talking about the possibility of filing smaller claims for non-catastrophic losses caused by break-ins, etc.

My contractor is pretty much ready to roll, and plans on getting started as soon as we close, which was good news. With the holidays I didn’t expect much to happen until January, but he said he’d just hired two new guys on his crew and that they’d all prefer to work and make money, except for Christmas day, and that’s more than fine with me.

We’re still going back and forth with budgets and timelines, but the goal is still to be done by January 31st and hopefully have the place rented. Current budget is at $17,500 for all repairs, and I think I can hold that line pretty strongly without the inevitable creeping budget overages.