Just before moving the tiny house out to the property I called Vast here in Marquette to inquire about insurance. I spoke with Karen and explained that I wanted to make an appointment to discuss insurance. When she asked for more imformation I explained that we were building something called a tiny house. She asked if she could find information about them online and I assured her that if she googled “tiny house” she would find more than enough information. I made an appointment to go to the office later that afternoon. When I showed up for the appointment Karen asked all sorts of questions about our little house. What was the square footage, how much had it cost so far, would it have a smoke alarm, would we anchor it to the ground…
She also told me that she called her insurance underwrite after she got off the phone with me and explained that she had a couple looking to get insurance for a tiny house. Her underwriter knew all about tiny houses and wanted to get one himself!
The tiny house is insured under a mobile home policy with a premium just under $400 a year. Compared to someone with a “real house” worth a couple hundred thousand dollars our policy seems rather pricy; however, in the insurance world, mobile homes are considered riskier and at $32 dollars a month we think it’s worth the price. I spoke with a coworker who’s camp is a mobile home and asked him what his premium was and he explained that he can’t get insurance on his camp because the mobile home is too old and that he would gladly pay $400 a year for coverage if he could get it.
Our policy covers $25,000 on the structure, $17,000 on personal belongings (I doubt we could even fit enough belongings in the tiny house to equal that), and $300,000 liability on the property. I did make an appointment with another insurance agency in town to compare policies. The other agent I spoke with seemed skeptical about being able to insure the tiny house, but he did say that the Vast policy looked about right. He told me he would look into things and call me back either way…I never heard back from him.
We did have to wait to get our physical address before we could sign our policy and that involved calling the Sheriff’s Department to request a fire number. The fire number took a few weeks to be issued but once I was able to give Vast our physical address we were insured. And I did confirm that we’re covered if the house is stolen!
BIG LAKE ~ tiny house 