Home insurance

Three separate coverages get confused with one another on the Texas Gulf Coast, and the distinction matters here.

Three separate coverages

A homeowners policy covers the usual perils, and at this address that includes windstorm and hail. The state insurance department says it plainly: "If you live anywhere in Texas, except along the coast, you probably have wind and hail coverage in your homeowners policy."¹ Many carriers set a separate, higher deductible for those two, which is a different thing from excluding them.¹

Flood is never covered by a homeowners policy. "Most homeowners and renters insurance do not cover flood damage."² Flood is a separate policy, through the National Flood Insurance Program or a private company.³ It does not start for 30 days, so it is no help once a storm is named.² There are a few exceptions, and the main one is buying flood coverage as part of taking out or renewing a mortgage, which starts right away.²

Separate windstorm coverage is a coastal product, and this is not the coast. The Texas Legislature set up the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association to cover "the seacoast territory of this state", and left it to the insurance commissioner to draw the actual line.⁴ The line the commissioner drew is the fourteen first-tier coastal counties plus "parts of Harris County east of Highway 146".⁵ The department's own Harris County map narrows it further, to land east of SH 146 and inside the city limits of Seabrook, La Porte, Shoreacres, Pasadena and Morgan's Point.⁶ Timberwood is roughly forty miles from there. If an agent says you need to buy windstorm separately for this address, ask them to point to the reason.

A property outside a mapped high-risk flood zone can still flood. Nationally, 29 percent of flood claims from 2014 to 2024 came from outside the high-risk areas,⁷ and "more than half of homes flooded by Hurricane Harvey were outside of designated flood zones."³ See flooding.

Worth knowing

• An elevation certificate "shows how high a building is compared to how high local floodwaters are expected to get". It does not set your flood rate any more, but it "can identify discounts", and most homeowners outside a high-risk zone do not need one to buy a policy.⁸ It is also the document a surveyor or engineer prepares when you file a Letter of Map Amendment to get a wrong flood zone corrected. FEMA charges nothing to review a LOMA and usually answers in 60 days; the surveyor is the cost.⁹
• Roof age drives both premium and claim outcomes across this region. A policy can pay the full cost to replace a roof, or it can pay actual cash value, which "pay[s] less if the roof is older or showing wear", and "as roofs age, some companies will switch to actual cash value".¹⁰ Check which one you have at renewal, not after a hailstorm. The Services is where those jobs get recorded.
• Percentage wind and hail deductibles are calculated against the insured value, not the claim. The state's own example: a home insured for $150,000 with a 5 percent deductible has a $7,500 deductible, so "if the home needed $6,500 in roof repairs, Policy B would not pay anything".¹¹

Still needed

• Which carriers neighbors here actually use, and what they pay
• Who has filed a flood or hail claim, and how it went
• Whether anyone has successfully used a Letter of Map Amendment on a Timberwood property
• Which local adjusters or agents were straight with people

See also

• Flooding
• Property taxes
• Storms and outages