The Need to Review Insurance Policies and Coverages with Bradley Maruyama

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Interview Transcription

ADRIENNE: 
Welcome back. And thanks for listening to the Team Lally Real Estate show home of the guaranteed sold program or we’ll buy it. I’m Adrienne, and I’m Attilio. And if you have any questions, just give us a call at 7999596 or check us out online at Teamlally.com.

ATTILIO: 
Hey, our guest today was born and raised in Hawaii. He earned his Bachelor of Business Administration at University of Hawaii Manoa.

ADRIENNE: 
With over 20 years of service to customers of Allstate Insurance, he’s come to know many local families and develop relationships which he used to better understand the needs of his customers. He’s the owner of Maruyama and Associates Allstate Insurance in Hawaii. Please welcome our guest, Bradley Maruyama. Hey, Bradley. What’s up? Hello,

ATTILIO: 
hello. Hello. So we got you on for a little bit

ADRIENNE: 
afternoon. Yes, yes. So welcome back. We know that you’re Yeah, you’re usually on with your your short tip. But this week, we’re excited because we have some extra time to go a little deeper on insurance. Any stories? I mean, I know you have 20 plus years, you gotta have a lot of stories of this moment of truth.

BRADLEY:
Yeah, you know, I know year after year, for the last 10 years, you know, we will always talk about the moment of truth and I think it’s the most important thing of being an agent because when you know, I mean, it’s easy for an agent to always ask for the premiums and send out the insurance cards, but what’s most important is when you have to use your insurance and file a claim. You want to make sure your agents right By Your Side and advocating, we don’t pay an approve these claims, but it’s very important that your agent or agency that you’re working with, does hold your hand and advocate on your behalf because so many things can go sidewards during the claims process, but

ADRIENNE: 
usually, it usually goes sideways, like, at an inconvenient time, but just because it inconvenient time, Bradley, it does not mean that you’re not around to help.

BRADLEY: 
No, absolutely, yes. Yep. And, and we typically get the calls when it’s going sideways. So that’s why we try to follow up, you know, just to say, Hey, how’s it going, Adrienne how’s the claim going, please call us if you don’t get a call back from the adjuster, please call us. If you’re struggling to work with your property manager of your association, please call us if your body defender is not treating you the way you’re supposed to, especially if you’re an approved vendor. So, you know, it’s very important to work with as a partnership with your insurance agency.

ATTILIO:
Yeah. And I think it’s important for them to get a call from you or them being aware that you’re involved in it. Because just like with our clients, you know, when we recommend vendors, we represent a lot of business to that vendor. So not that they should be doing it differently just because we call them but they are more self aware that it’s important that we take care of that client verbally because he’s not going to refer future business to me.

ADRIENNE:
That’s right. And Bradley’s watching, right, yeah, yeah,

BRADLEY: 
absolutely. You know, this could be a little negative thing. Yeah. But it’s good that I disclosed this, and, you know, throw it out there. So you can think about it. But I lost a piece of business this morning. And the comment I got via email is, you know, you and Angelique. I really like and I wanted to give you guys a business, but I spoke to the neighbor. And they had a tough time with their with their condo claim it dropped, you know, dragged on, and they weren’t very pleased. But again, that’s just a reflection of that one claim. Now, when I call the client back, you know, to get some feedback, you know, what happened? Did your neighbor tell you what happened? Well, of course, the agency was not involved. So although it was an all states fault, and it was the association’s adjuster that they were waiting for it, they felt that the adjuster or the agency should have worked on their behalf to help advocate because the insurance don’t know insurance. There were depending on their agents for the adjuster to help advocate for them to get their claim through it. You know, that wasn’t there, and we’re all separate. We’re not just one fallen, they’re all state. We’re all independent agencies. So I did let them know that, you know, I’m so sorry that your neighbor went through it. But, you know, if you do ever consider all sit again, you know, please, please look me up because it would be a different experience.

ADRIENNE: 
So what you’re saying is that, maybe not all Allstate agents are created equally.

ATTILIO: 
Well, they’re all created. Now started. They all started. Step one. Yes. But just like all so Attilio and I are with Keller Williams, yeah. And there’s 180,000 of them of us, right? Yeah, we’re not all created equally. No. So sort of square one, get the license, same thing for Allstate, but just like in anything when stuff goes sideways, you need uni and, and we’ve had personal experience with Bradley and stuff going sideways. With the with the moment of truth with a moment of truth. And the moment of truth is is like, you call it Bradley like a I wouldn’t call it Uber Eats and they kind of running late with my food. Can you

buy zippers and give me one zip pack? No, no, no, that’s not a moment of truth. The moment of truth is you got to do a claim. And then you’re gonna go through that process. And so don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater with your Allstate experience. Check to see that it was Bradley and his team because things are different. Because they’re the best. They’re the best. That’s I mean, my house. My car. My HO6 all with Bradley and his team.

ADRIENNE: 
And then oh, yeah,

ATTILIO: 
and our business. Yes. And our office. Yep. Everything. We got Bradley swag, you know, Maruyama swag all over the place. But let’s talk about more of

ADRIENNE: 
the you have some you have some topics that we want to touch on with you during our time today. Yes, that’s music. Yeah, no. So the first one is, was Hurricane Yeah, hurricane season.

ATTILIO: 
Let’s get sound effects on the show.

ADRIENNE: 
Let’s talk about some tips on preparing for this. Yeah.

BRADLEY: 
As for preparing, you know, what I like to tell my insurance, whether they’re new or what doing a review. You know, go around your house with your with your phone and start taking videos and pictures of all the belongings outside and inside. Because during the claims process, so you know if your house is damaged, or there’s personal contents that may have blown away or gotten wet. You know, when you have to itemize what’s in your house that got damaged, it’s much easier to go through that claims process, because it’s going to be stressful, you know, you’re going to, you’re going to be living in conditions where you may not have a roof or leaking roof. But you know, to alleviate some of that pressure, you know, go around your house and take a picture of that shed outside or take a picture of the surfboards that you have in your garage. You know, all that kinds of stuff will help aid you during the process. can also get you prepared is understanding your coverage. So we constantly talk we can we call to review your hurricane insurance with your agent, not just your hurricane, but your your homeowners insurance. But since we’re on the topic of hurricane, no, make sure you understand your deductible. Now a lot of people don’t realize that they’re being offered 5% deductibles out there. So what that means is, if you had a house that was 500,000, in coverage for your structure, your deductible is $25,000. So before your insurance company does anything to picture house, you’re responsible for the first 25,000. So it’s very important to understand your deductible. When you’re reviewing your hurricane insurance, I’m sorry, go ahead.

ATTILIO: 
Oh, making sure you understand what your what your coverages are.

BRADLEY:
Yeah, you know, so I recently, you know, especially on Kauai, cost of construction is so much higher than Oahu. So, there is a realtor out there that reached out to me and said, Brad, I know you, your system automatically increased our structure coverage, our costs cost per foot. But he goes 500 isn’t enough your employee, we have to increase it to six 600 per square foot. So you know, I went in there I did once or the cost estimator. We didn’t increase it to 600 a square foot. But it’s important to review these these coverages with your insurance because that hurricane comes, if I want to do be that agent that can service you at the moment of truth. We’ve got to have the right coverages. Yeah. I had an insurer it asked me so why do you get so stressed out during El Nino years are hurricane season? My biggest fear and what stresses me out so much during the season? Sometimes we don’t get the hurricane payments from the mortgage company. So that means is when you’re closing on your property, and it’s paid through escrow? It does you as insured aren’t paying for the bill. It’s it’s being the bill is being sent to the mortgage company. They cut us a check and paid for it. But every hurricane season as a hurricane is approaching, we start going to our cancellation audit to see which hurricane policies we never got payments for because we don’t want to be that insurance agent that says you don’t have hurricane coverage after the hurricane passes. So so. So what we do is we go through that list, we start calling everyone did your mortgage change? Did you refinance? Are you still wanting to hurricane coverage? And we’re trying to get all these hurricane policies out before there’s a moratorium. So a moratorium is when the insurance companies stop writing all business. No way that typically occurs when a hurricane is 500 nautical miles from the Big Island. Okay. Okay, or when it’s a hurricane warning. So once that hurricane warning comes out, all the insurance companies will say no more car insurance, no more hurricane insurance, no more home insurance. No, nothing. We’re not going to write anything because the risk is too great.

ATTILIO: 
It’s like when the dealer showing when ace on the blackjack, and they go insurance. And then when the hurricane is 590 miles off of a big island, they’re gonna say no more insurance.

ADRIENNE: 
I mean, that seems really odd that the mortgage company because the mortgage company requires you to get this insurance, and then they’re dropping the ball. The homeowner, yeah. And they’re investing like usually have at least 80% of that value. Yeah, if you get a loan. Yep. So that seems very strange that they wouldn’t, you know, take that money from the escrow account and pay the insurance. How often does that happen? Bradley?

BRADLEY: 
I’m bringing it up because it happened this morning. I got an email on how do I prevent this from happening? It gave me anxiety and the email came at 12:30am. So I know it would it bothered them. Yeah. But it’s like, how can I prevent this? Because the escrow and I see they paid for my home insurance, but they didn’t pay for my hurricane. And I think the reason why it occurs is that we’re a little different than the rest of the states. Then from the rest of the states, because we have hurricane coverage. Gotcha. So a lot of times they see that they have wind coverage on their homeowners, and they said, Oh, this was the face, not knowing that there’s still a hurricane policy that they have to pay. So I think that’s, that’s that’s the issue. Sometimes they refinance. And we send them the declaration pages, because it was midway through the renewal. But we they don’t let us know. And we don’t have the new updated mortgage company and loan number. And now the bill doesn’t get sent to the new mortgage company, so they don’t pay it. So that could be another scenario. So just

ADRIENNE: 
the miscommunication between the mortgage company and the insurance company. Yeah. And like then they’re only paying for whatever part they felt like is is needed. Even though that’s not what the homeowner had signed up for. Yes.

ATTILIO: 
That’s a good deed double check. You don’t figure that out when the hurricane came

ADRIENNE: 
No, ready? Or when the hurricane is 500 nautical miles? And you can’t

ATTILIO: 
do anything about it. One, but not not. Yeah, not 500 or four.

ADRIENNE:
I love how Bradley and his team are so proactive. Yeah, they’re proactive about it. Because obviously, you know, this would just be a tragedy if the hurricane came and damaged the house, and here they are think you didn’t have the insurance and then their mortgage company didn’t, you know, didn’t pay for

ATTILIO:
it. The best insurances, the one you don’t use, and then even better insurance is the one that actually covers the situation you’re in. Yes, once it does happen, but you know, Bradley, I was thinking about and I was talking with a group of economists of why construction costs are more expensive on Kauai and they have actually narrowed it down to green bottles. One case Heineken is wary, more expensive for the construction workers after they’re done with the day. So construction costs are naturally going to be higher on Kauai. Yeah. Rebar inflation is called

BRADLEY: 
inflation. Yeah. You know, we always talk, we talk a lot about HO6, and homeowners but here, you know, here’s another gap of insurance when it hurts when for hurricane and a lot of people will get renter’s insurance, because it’s so inexpensive. Yeah. But if you have renter’s insurance, keep in mind you need our separate hurricane policy. Your renter’s insurance will cover you for fire and when but you know, so many agencies as well as insurance, they think, Oh, this renter’s insurance company covered but there’s a gap, you still need to get a hurricane policy on top of your renter’s insurance. And another one I got a new employee that I’m training and when you buy an HOA when you buy a condo, you’re required to get an HO6 policy. Yes. Same thing with the townhouse. No. But when you’re closing and you’re getting your loan, typically HO6 policies don’t require you to get hurricane insurance. It’s not mandatory. So if you live in a tunnel, it’s not so much a high rise. But if you live in the tunnels, I would really consider an advocate you folks to to get a hurricane quote or a policy because it’s very inexpensive. Because your townhouse has a very high probability of getting hit. You’re not elevated 20 storeys up. So some of them are two three storeys high. So

ADRIENNE: 
So typically, what is that, that difference in cost? Like when you have your normal insurance policy? Just to add that that hurricane writer on HO6 yes. What’s the typical so

BRADLEY: 
to you know, to get some upgrades and some contents and what I call additional living expense policy, about 100 bucks a year. Wow. Go and add this, add this coverage on.

ATTILIO: 
I went to the movies last night and one small popcorn was $100. Yeah.

ADRIENNE: 
So, so Bradley shifting on to first time homebuyers. You know, we work with a lot of first time homebuyers and even you know, experience homebuyers and people they forget. Yeah, but like

ATTILIO: 
because they don’t they’re going from renting. Yeah. They may not even have renting insurance and they’re like homeowners insurance. What’s that? Yeah. What is

ADRIENNE: 
that? And then homeowners insurance. What can they expect? Yeah. When it comes to this?

BRADLEY: 
Yeah. So, you know, I like to talk about this because sometimes insurance It can actually disqualify your transaction. So I like to always talk about what could hold back your transaction, things to look for. So homeowners insurance and car insurance is getting a little tighter was meaning that is getting. But underwriting is getting a little stricter. To get these policies. What I would be looking for is if the house was built before 1955. Number two, has the plumbing and electrical been updated. So is it the old knob and tube electrical? Without with just two prongs? With no breaker box? Is the plumbing upgraded to plastic, PVC, PVC or copper? Because the old cast iron plumbing rustling already has a tendency to break crack and backup plates. So yeah,

ATTILIO: 
to make sure, yeah, with the cast iron sewer line too. And my dad had it running under his house, it was for 30 $40,000 to fix it.

ADRIENNE: 
So So Bradley, when you come across a home that has not had these things upgraded. Can they get coverage? Or what’s the solution? Yeah.

BRADLEY: 
Yeah. So interesting enough. Allstate does write these types of policies. So we do get a lot of referral business from some of the brokers. But I always tell people, we can write it. But I highly recommend you get this updated. Because you don’t want to be live in a house that has a high fire exposure, you don’t want to, you don’t want to risk your children or your family members being stuck in a house. So although we do write these now, the two bones please get it updated. The harder ones are when the roof is older and 20 years old. So all companies now the house is older than 25, they want to see proof and documentation that your house your roof has been redone. Now with us, we will still write it, and they’ll give you time to get it fixed. But it’s gotten you got to have a signed contract for us to prove to the underwriters that they are going to get their roof done within the next 30 or 60 days.

ADRIENNE:
And then you guys come out and inspect and what happens if you haven’t done the roof in that time period, then what

BRADLEY: 
then I’m gonna I’m gonna get this ugly email that says there’s a there’s a hazard we’re going to non renew this policy then is that a good thing? Yeah, here’s a here’s a contract signed contract with XYZ roofing and they will be fixing their roof in the next 60 days. They’ll grant us some time to get it fixed.

ATTILIO: 
Yeah, that’s good. And these are I call these grown up situations, time to time to be an adult with your own piece of real estate and knowing knowing about these insurance, but what else Bradley?

BRADLEY: 
flood insurance so you know, a lot of realtors because over the years I’ve been doing a lot of flood classes but flood insurance sometimes that hold up this transaction because maybe the loan officer or the insured never seek a flood cool. So now they’re you know, working down to the final days of closing. They’ve got the homeowners they’ve got the hurricane and they got a $4,000 flood cool which is going to add close to $370 a month to their mortgage and now they don’t qualify. So if you’re buying in a flood zone flood zone A E or B E, typically the mortgage is going to require a flood flood insurance policy. So please, you’re buying in a flood zone which is probably near a river and Manoa or coastline on the water in Lanikai, Kailua, Waianae, Kahala, please reach out and get that flood insurance quote because this could disqualify you from qualifying for your loan.

ADRIENNE: 
And let’s talk a little bit about the elevation certificate can help save you quite a bit of money when it comes to the flood insurance. Yeah, what is that Bradley.

BRADLEY:
So an elevation certificate. flood elevation certificate is done by a surveyor engineer that will show how high your house should be above base flood elevation to get the preferred rate and your flood insurance so they will shoot these elevations to see where your house lies. Now, your if you have an newly built home, there’s probably something on file with the city and county because it has to be the code of the building codes. But basically, they want to make sure that if that if there’s a tsunami or the river overflows in your house is still sitting above where those tidal waters would be. In my, from my Yeah, my property and in Aina Haina. We sit in a flood zone. And even after we had all those torrential rains several years ago, the water came up, but it never did enter the hall. So it just lowers the risk of your house flooding

ADRIENNE: 
and lowers your flood insurance payments, right. So, I mean, it may be worth it to get the Elevate elevation certificate, or even make those little modifications that need to be done. So that you can save on that. Ah, well.

ATTILIO: 
Jodi talked about it on the other show last week about budget. And you got to you got to incorporate insurance into your budget for homeownership. It’s important. Bradley, one other question. Yeah, it’s very important. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. It’s created quite a quite a bit of controversy out there in the world. But do you think children should be allowed to use chat GPT to do their homework?

BRADLEY: 
Absolutely not. I want

ATTILIO: 
to ask you Chad GPT to answer that question for you.

ADRIENNE:
He has first hand experience on this. Yeah, he’s got some kids at home.

BRADLEY: 
You said college is gonna be easy. I got I got some apps that’s gonna help me get through college. Oh,

ATTILIO:
yeah. I went to prom with my chat GPT. I don’t even date. I just brought CHAT GPT with me. That’s a very interesting conversation was great. So I imported the chat GPT.

ADRIENNE: 
Let’s see, as we are wrapping up the show here Bradley. I’d like you’d say, you know, give us some, give us some stories. Give us a story, an example. And you start off with once upon a time of the moment of truth. I think our listeners deserve to hear. Yeah, give

ATTILIO:
us one example.

ADRIENNE: 
One of these stories.

BRADLEY:
Here’s a good one, because I’m going through it right now. But you know, so once upon a time, two months ago, three months ago, there was an individual fairly first time homebuyer that came home to a big waterfall coming down her prevent in her bathroom. And the water kept gushing out. They didn’t stop to want to the resident manager and found out 14 floors up that a contractor hit a pipe and shut shut off valve was not actually shut off. The water was flowing. They couldn’t stop it from coming down. So it damaged her whole unit. Of course, she’s going to be very traumatized. She was panicked. She didn’t know what to do. So she gave me a call. And I said, you know, here’s the process. First things first, we’re going to set you up to stay at a hotel until we can find a long term condo for you to rent. So she was very happy with that. I said meanwhile, though, as I’m setting this up, go and get your association bylaws and all the contact information for the property manager, the association insurance agent and your resident management. So I got all this documentation. I got all the contacts, we filed the claim. But there was a hiccup. Nothing ever goes smoothly. We found out three weeks after we filed the claim that the association deductible went from 25,000 to 75,000. And this is three weeks after the claim occurred. Oh no. Okay, so I called the insurance agent on the property and they said no. At renewal, which is one one that deductible was sent up so there was no correspondence. This insured was fully insured for the $25,000 deductible. So here we go again. It’s intense. He’s stressed out what am I going to do? I don’t have enough coverage on my HO6. So we I worked I advocated I worked on our behalf for behalf because it didn’t know what to do. So initially, they were saying well, you can talk to the other unit unit owners to see if they all submitted their estimates because the association was still waiting for three estimates that didn’t work. No one wanted to talk to me. So I went to the mitigation company. I worked with the adjuster. We got all the estimates in so now she has upgrade money for her unit because she had wood flooring and upgraded cabinets and vanities. So she can start her jobs and for three months you know she stayed at a condo comparable to where she’s at, close to her workplace where she still walk. And I got three referrals from that. She said, You got to work with my insurance agents hands on, I was crying. I was scared. Brad helped me through the whole process. So that’s something I’ve been dealing with for three months. But she just just texted me yesterday saying she got all the money from all states. And now we’re just awaiting the money from Association. A moment of truth.

ATTILIO: 
Yeah, like a story. What a good ending.

ADRIENNE: 
Yeah, that must have been Yeah. You said it’s usually younger. And, you know, first time homebuyer and just to experience all of that.

ATTILIO: 
That’s why it’s important for you to get your insurance reviewed by by Bradley Bradley and his team, are you covered? If you want to, you know, make sure you got that squared away now. Something happens,

ADRIENNE: 
or even, or even just give him a call and let him review it. And, you know, the conversation spring?

ATTILIO: 
Yeah. Call him up like, Oh, my God taught me Bradley. Well, I need your help in this moment of truth.

BRADLEY:
Yeah, she was like, we’re going to action line, we’re gonna, we’re gonna go to the DCC, I want to hire enough parents to live and let’s, let’s work this out. When we can get done and then take a deep breath, but I get it. It’s stressful. You know, when you can live in your own home and you’re living out of a suitcase for three months. I know, it’s terrible. So, you know, lean on your insurance. We don’t as insurance agents, we don’t make the determination of how much money you get, or if it’s covered or not, but we can definitely advocate so yes.

ADRIENNE: 
And you’re an excellent professional advocator. So much. Thank you, Bradley.

ATTILIO: 
Support Team, Lally, and everything else. So thanks, Bradley. Yes, thank you, you. Okay. Hey, if you’re a realtor out there, and you want to, you know, get somebody on your team as a good insurance company, good insurance team. That’s Bradley and his team, we highly recommend them working with him for many years. Yes. And if you’re just somebody out there that needs a good Insurance Agent, we recommend it again. And

ADRIENNE:
if you go to Teamlally.com under the Resource tab, there’s Experts we Trust and he’s there. We’ve got several videos of Bradley through the years even.

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