Why Local Home Insurance Matters
Working with a local insurance agency offers several benefits:

• Familiarity with Regional Risks: Local providers understand the specific risks in your area, such as flooding, hurricanes, or other natural disasters.
• Personalized Service: Local agents offer one-on-one guidance to help you choose the right policy and answer questions quickly.
• Community Focus: Many local agencies are invested in the community and prioritize building lasting relationships with their clients.

Key Features of Home Insurance
Before diving into what to look for locally, let’s review the key components of a typical home insurance policy:

1. Dwelling Coverage
This protects the structure of your home, including the walls, roof, and foundation, from covered perils such as fire, storms, or vandalism.

2. Personal Property Coverage
Covers your belongings, such as furniture, electronics, and clothing, against theft, damage, or destruction. Some policies may also cover items lost or damaged outside your home.

3. Liability Coverage
Provides financial protection if someone is injured on your property or if you cause damage to someone else’s property. It can cover medical expenses, legal fees, and settlements.

4. Additional Living Expenses (ALE)
Covers the cost of temporary housing and other living expenses if your home becomes uninhabitable due to a covered event.

5. Flood and Earthquake Coverage
Standard home insurance typically does not cover floods or earthquakes. If you live in a high-risk area, consider purchasing separate policies for these perils.

What to Look For in Local Home Insurance

1. Reputation
Start by researching reviews and testimonials from local providers. Positive feedback about customer service, claims handling, and responsiveness is a good indicator of reliability.

2. Customizable Policies
Every homeowner has different needs. Look for insurers that allow you to tailor coverage to match your property’s value, location, and specific risks.

3. Affordability
Compare quotes from different local insurers to find a policy that fits your budget. Be sure to ask about discounts for:

• Bundling home and auto insurance.
• Installing safety features like security systems or smoke detectors.
• Having a claims-free history.

4. Local Expertise
Choose a provider that understands your area’s specific risks, such as extreme weather conditions or high crime rates, and can offer appropriate coverage options.

Benefits of Working with Hecht Insurance Advisors
At Hecht Insurance Advisors, we pride ourselves on delivering exceptional service to homeowners in Virginia and beyond. Here’s why clients choose us:

• Tailored Coverage: We work with top insurance carriers to customize policies based on your unique needs.
• Local Knowledge: As a trusted agency in the community, we understand the challenges homeowners face and offer coverage that provides peace of mind.
• Responsive Support: From helping you choose a policy to navigating the claims process, we’re with you every step of the way.

How to Get Started
​Finding the right home insurance near you doesn’t have to be complicated. Follow these steps:

1. Assess Your Needs: Consider your home’s value, location, and specific risks to determine what coverage you need.
2. Research Providers: Look for local agencies with strong reputations and comprehensive policy options.
3. Compare Quotes: Gather quotes from multiple providers to find the best value for your budget.
4. Speak with an Advisor: Contact Hecht Insurance Advisors for expert guidance and personalized recommendations.

Contact Us Today
Protect your home with confidence by working with Hecht Insurance Advisors. Call us at 540-712-2199 or visit our Home Insurance page to request a free, no-obligation quote. Let us help you safeguard your most important asset.

​More exercise - When you own a dog, you should be taking it out for walks every day. And the benefit is that when you're exercising your pooch, you too are exercising. Walking 30 minutes a day can do wonders for your health.

Less stress - Numerous studies have shown that people with dogs have lower stress levels. Engaging with your dog in whatever form can reduce your stress.

Illness detection - Dogs really see the world through their noses thanks to their keen sense of smell. Some dogs are sensitive enough to detect the onset of epileptic seizures, or the presence of some cancers. Many dog owners have reported their dog sniffing, licking or nudging areas of the body that later turned out to be cancerous.

More allergy tolerance - Children who are raised around pets have a reduced chance of having allergies. And growing up with a dog can boost immunity to pet allergies later in life.

Boosting brain development - Dogs boost brain development in children, along with emotional growth and connection to others.

Stronger heart - Studies have shown that petting a dog can lower your heart rate, and male pet owners tend to have reduced rates of heart disease.

Less chance of depression - Dog owners are less likely to be depressed. The companionship they offer has been shown to help people who have been diagnosed with clinical depression, largely because caring for another living thing can help relieve symptoms of depression and make people feel more positive.

​Safety - Dogs are like a living alarm system. Barking dogs can keep burglars at bay and they can alert you if someone is snooping around the outside of your house, giving you a greater sense of security.

Here's what you should know about your homeowner's insurance at this time.

Business at home
If you have had to move your business to your home, you may want to review your homeowner's coverage. The typical homeowner's police have very low limits on business property (usually up to about $2,000), which would likely not be enough if your equipment is damaged or stolen. 

If you are suddenly running your business from home, please call us and we can go through your policy and, if needed, we can work with your insurer to see if they offer a home business endorsement or higher coverage limits for business property.

Also, if you are running an Airbnb out of your home for a room or another property, you should have purchased landlord coverage or home-sharing coverage as a typical homeowner's policy may not cover damage incurred by paying guests.
At this time, you are likely not getting anybody staying at your place, so you should contact your insurance company about pausing or canceling coverage since you will have no need for it for a while.
 
Filing a claim
If you have an incident in your home and need to file a claim, there's a good chance that your insurer will be unable to send an adjuster for an inspection. Most homeowner's insurers now have apps or offer you the ability to file your claim online on their website.  

The procedures for filing a claim using an app or doing it on your insurer's website is pretty straightforward. You can start by taking pictures of the damage and providing receipts or a list of the property that may have been damaged or stolen. If it was stolen, make sure you file a police report and submit that with the claim as well.

However, if you have a high-dollar claim, the insurer may send an adjuster to inspect the damage before they pay the claim. For smaller claims, it's likely they will pay them out.
 
What insurers are doing
Insurers are making adjustments to their operations and policies during this time as well. Their actions will vary from company to company, but there are similarities in some of their responses:

• Some insurers have announced that they won't cancel a policy for a policyholder who is temporarily out of work or has seen their income drastically cut. These carriers are granting premium payment extensions.
• For those people whose policies may be in danger of lapsing because they cannot afford to pay the full premium, some insurers are working with them to reinstate the policies and set up a payment plan. They are often waiving reinstatement fees as well.
• Many insurers are postponing scheduled home inspections.
• If an insurer has asked that certain home repairs be carried out for a policy to renew, and the policyholder can't meet the inspection deadline, some companies are giving more time to finish the repairs.

Insurers are still running their call centers (in some areas, these staff are working from home).

You can set up some smart sensors as stand-alone units with their own dedicated hub, while others are adaptable and can communicate with brand-name smart home hubs like:

• SmartThings,
• Apple HomeKit, or 
• Wink

The sensors communicate with a central hub using Bluetooth technology, while the hub uses your home Wifi to alert the app on your phone. 

Here are the sensors that can give you the most bang for your buck in terms of safety and preventing damage to your home, its contents, your family - and even pets.

Water sensors
There are a number of smart leak detectors on the market, and depending on the brand, the system can shut off water in about five seconds after detecting a leak in your home. This can save you thousands of dollars in property damage.

You can place these sensors at specific points where leaks are possible, such under sinks, appliances and water heaters. This allows you to customize a leak detection solution based on your needs or concerns. Some sensors can even detect changes in water temperature, which can help you avoid damage from frozen pipes.

These sensor units may also include shut-off valves, which can be installed at strategic locations in your piping. It's best to call a plumber because installing a shut-off valve may require cutting into the water line. Leave that to the pros. 

Freeze sensors
These are typically only necessary in regions that have freezing temperatures and snow for periods of time in the winter. When pipes freeze, they can back up, expand and burst and possibly flood parts of your home.

Many of the systems that detect leaks also can detect if pipes have frozen. Like leak sensors, freeze sensors are small devices that constantly monitor the temperature of the object or area they're in touch with. If a sensor detects frozen pipes, it will notify you via your smart phone app or activate a shut-off valve if it's installed.

Smart smoke alarms
A smart smoke alarm works just like a normal smoke alarm, except it has the added feature of notifying you if there is a fire and you are not home. That gives you the opportunity to call the fire department or a trusted neighbor to ensure a faster response.

If you own an Alexa speaker, it has a feature that will act as a smoke alarm by listening for the sound of your regular smoke alarm then send you an alert. There is also a smart 9V battery on the market that you plug into your smoke alarm and which alerts you in case it goes off.

Temperature sensors
Smart temperature sensors can alert you to changes in areas of your home that need to have steady temperatures, such as wine cabinets, crib rooms, pet enclosures and humidors. 

Window and door sensors
For your home security needs, you may want to consider door and window sensors. They usually come in two parts - one that attaches to the door or window frame, and another that attaches to the door or window itself.

When the door or window is closed, the circuit between the two parts of the sensor is complete and so is marked as 'closed' - but as soon as a door or window is opened, the circuit is 'broken,' which triggers an alert.

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Homeowner's insurance

Under a homeowner's policy, the insured is limited to:
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• Residents of your household who are your relative, and
• A student enrolled in school full time, as defined by the school, and under the age of 24-29 (this varies depending on the policy and carrier, so check your policy).

 
This causes issues for some people, as many children are still in college beyond the policy cut-off date. You could run into coverage gaps for their contents and personal liability if:

• They are older than the cut-off age on your policy,
• They aren't a full-time student, or
• They are living away from home.

 
The picture gets murkier these days as well because many parents are renting an apartment or buying condos for their adult children to live in. Some parents may mistakenly think that since they are footing the bill, their insurance may still cover their adult child. But that's not the case.
 
Auto coverage

Typical auto insurance policies will include family members under the coverage. The standard policy form defines a family member as "a person related to you by blood, marriage or adoption who is a resident of your household." 
For your adult child's vehicle, insurance coverage is determined by:

• Who owns the title on the car.
• Who is listed on the policy as a named insured or additional insured.
• Where the child is living.

 
As you can see, even if a parent owns the title of the car and it's insured under the parent's policy, if the adult child is driving the vehicle and lives on their own, they could run into coverage issues in certain instances.

The following scenarios could leave you with coverage gaps:

• If a vehicle is co-titled or titled solely to the child, but the child isn't listed as an additional insured or named insured on the parents' policy.
• Your child borrows a friend's car (which the friend had not insured) for the day, gets in an accident and injures the driver of the other car.
• Your child rents a vehicle, doesn't buy the insurance offered by the rental car company and then is in an accident.
• Your child is hit by an uninsured motorist while walking across the street. There is no medical payments or uninsured motorist's coverage for their own injuries.
• Your child is at a concert and accidentally bumps someone off the edge of the stadium bleachers, causing severe injuries. There's no coverage for the injuries caused to that person.

 
If you have an adult child on your policy, play it safe and give us a call so we can go over your policy and circumstances with you to identify any possible coverage gaps. 

Without the proper insurance protection for injuries and damages, you risk significant financial liabilities that you may not be able to cover.

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