Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Evaluating insurance

Things change over time and economics of insurance change as well. Costs to the consumer of these products are going up with no perceived benefits. Costs of cars and prebuilt kit housing has come down to a point where a total rebuild is in the reaches of of say a three year pay back period. that is the wage of say 80 thousand dollars a year and the all be it small house is in the vicinity of 80 thousand dollars for a kit home placed on your property. The pay back period wold be about four years using one quarter of your income.
Bear in mind that you may not be covered for the calamity that strikes you anyway. Then if you are lucky enough to have this calamity strike and the government declares a national disaster you may be covered by a government hand out.
So how much risk are insurance companies taking? It seams not much as in my case paying for insurance for five decades and making a small claim and then not going threw with the claim because of increased policy costs and fixing the broken window myself and the other damage vandals caused whilst I was not there.
Then all the interest I could have gotten from the premiums plus the premiums would have built several houses.
Then there is the importation of kit houses from china all flat packed and prewired and erected in the same time as it takes to erect a garden shed for the cost of $10.000 for a four bedroom house.
You can get relocatable houses on EBay for similar prices. Then there is the way we use houses where the trend is smaller is better if you are to believe the small house movement.
The younger generation are giving up on home ownership because of costs and we will see a move towards traveling houses and the like. The older generation are going on the road and downsizing leaving large houses hard to sell. Smart young entrepreneurs buying large houses and turning them into duplexes.
Yes things are about to change dramatically.

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