Insurance for homebrew

[shenrie]

Ive got an agreed value policy with safeco not to exceed a certain preset amount. If I wanna pay more yearly I can up the coverage.

In Idaho it takes a certain amount of items to be considered an rv. Like 7 of the 12 things they consider all rv’s to have. I don’t have enough credentials to be considered an rv, but they look at my van to be more like a hard to replace or collectible car.

[BroncoHauler]

Originally Posted by shenrie

... but they look at my van to be more like a hard to replace or collectible car.

Do they limit the amount of miles you can put on it in a year?




Herb

[shenrie]

^^^ Nope.

They also offer a 2 million dollar umbrella policy one of our instructors told me about. He had to up the coverage on all the autos, but It covers his wife’s in home hair and nail salon as well as his motorcycles, even more specifically his old international 4x4’s. He has similar coverages on those as I do with my van. I just can’t afford that right now but I hope to move that direction sooner than later.

[parisdakar]

I use State Farm. My E350 isn't a full home brew, but it also doesn't meet the specs of an RV. I can direct you to my agent (here in California) if you require. She and her family go to the desert a lot, ride motos, haul trailers, etc. She understands the angles for non-RV.

[scuba]

Update: I tried Safeco -- no luck. Apparently (I didn't realize this) "Safeco" is just a sales channel for Liberty mutual. The Safeco agent went to Foremost for underwriting, who responded that it must be an RV, so this didn't work for me. You guys with Safeco success may have had a different underwriter.

Last hope is State Farm. They have a form for value of customizations (see attached, for everyone's benefit). This is really great, but the agent did say claims would be paid out on an ACV basis (i.e. depreciated if a total loss). Soooooo, let me know if anyone has claims experience on that basis with State Farm, but sounds like worst case it will be the residual value off of a 5-year depreciation schedule. Maybe best case, it will be the value of a similar year used SMB-type Van as traded on ebay at the time of loss.

[scuba]

Alright, it looks like Sate Farm will cover the van customizations ($70k in addition to the base van, ) on an ACV basis, for about $1250 per year. (including liability, etc)

Couldn't get anyone to do an agreed value policy.

Good news is that it finally forced me to get my other autos off my over priced insurance.

Does $1250 sound right? ($250 comprehensive deductible, $1k collision deductible).

[Charliesmom]

My 2020 premium from Progressive RV was ~$1100 ($500 deductible comprehensive/collision, $250,000/$500,000 bodily injury/uninsured motorist, total loss replacement/purchase price). Not full-timing.
So, your premium sounds about right.
Our SMB has the RVIA certification and checks off most of the “boxes” for an RV.

[scuba]

Here's the form I used at State Farm.

[nyyankees588]

Not trying to unnecessarily bump old thread, but figured I'd share my recent (Feb '22) experience going through the insurance process for a home-brew.

Background: we own a 2003 Ford E250 (2wd) van that we self-converted ~4yrs ago. It has a bed, fridge, sink, etc (no permanent toilet). Until '22, it was just insured as an auto, which was really cheap because a 2003 ford e250 is only valued at like $5k by insurance. The obvious risk is that if something happened, none of the build-out would be covered and technically we could be kicked off our policy if something did happen and insurance discovered that we had self-converted the vehicle.

What we did: Getting the van insured as an RV was long overdue - when we moved from WA to CA, I decided to bite the bullet and make it happen.

• Geico (our existing insurance): flatly denied our request, said they do not insure self-converted vans. I offered to have it appraised by a professional and shared that it had a RIVA sticker from its original build (as a handicap conversion van). They didn't care. Bummer, because we've had nothing but good experiences with Geico.
• State Farm (had great experience with them when we had a massive $35k renters insurance claim under their coverage): Similar to what others wrote, they requested photos and descriptions of the work completed/items installed. They could provide coverage BUT it had to be insured in tandem with a second vehicle. The second vehicle would be listed as a daily driver, allowing the van to be listed as a non-daily driver RV. Unfortunately their quote for our second vehicle (a honda element) was over $500 more per year than our current policy with Geico. State Farm didn't care if the van was registered w/ the DMV as an auto or RV. They would insure it at my requested value ($25k).
• Allstate: No prior experience with them, reached out after the State Farm quote came in at $500 more/yr. They offered all the same coverage as State Farm, but didn't require that the van be insured alongside a second vehicle. They also didn't require photos or itemized list of modifications done to the van. Just an agreed value of $25k. They also didn't care about DMV registration of auto or RV. As a result, we went with All State and went ahead and switched our honda element over to them as well to consolidate providers (they were about the same rate as Geico for the element).