Home Insurance in North Carolina: What Realtors Must Know

Episode originally aired: March 31, 2026

In this episode of the DASHcast Podcast, Zac Campbell sits down with insurance expert Randy Young to break down everything North Carolina home buyers and real estate agents need to know about homeowners insurance right now.

Watch on YouTube Listen on Spotify Listen on Apple Podcasts

Home Insurance in North Carolina: What Every Realtor Needs to Know

Full Episode Transcript

The following transcript is from the DASHcast audio, formatted for readability.

Foreign. My name is Randy Young and this is the dashcast podcast. And on today’s episode, we’re gonna catch up on insurance and talk about some insurance today. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Born and raised right here in Raleighwood.

Been here my entire life. That’s sad, right? 60 years. This is as far as I’ve got. Five miles away from where I was born.

But I’m in the insurance business. Okay. Yeah, I got my real estate license early on too, so I’ve done real estate, but the bulk of my career has been insurance. 20 plus years and currently sit inside the Dash office. And we go to the Charlotte office too, obviously.

Now we’re going to Asheville and Greensboro, ultimately Fable. But again, insurance. And any questions you have about insurance, call Jesse, call your daughter. Yeah. And one thing I always love about Randy is that Randy was an agent.

You mentioned that as well. And there’s about three years in real estate, right? About three and a half, maybe 18. Yeah, about three and a half. 121 deals.

131, but if you’re counting. Yeah, I mean, that’s. That’s incredible. I mean, most agents don’t hit that until 15, 20 years in the business. Why?

My back against the wall. It’s amazing what you’ll do when you have to write out your bootstraps. Yeah, yeah. You got to write some big alimony checks. You’ll do.

You’ll do it. You’ll get it done, I promise. That’s good, though. Excellent. Well, I’m glad to have you on the, on the show today.

And just this mainly is to kind of go over what agents are asking right now about insurance. Okay. Buyers are asking what. What has changed in the inside insurance world today in the last few years that we’ve seen like differently in the last few years. Yeah.

Everything now is related to the roof of the house, specifically all the realtors that are out there at dash, I would say not all, the bulk of it are on the buy side, people buying a home. So they want to see what their home is going to look like in terms of the escrow with the taxes and insurance. The home is rated basically on the age of the home period. And then the roof or roof is a really, really big deal. And now the rates are going up in North Carolina along with everything else.

I mean, five years ago, what a house was worth versus five years, you know, before that, and then to now, you know, just incrementally every five years. Think about how crazy that is. The cost of material just to Build a house. And that’s what insurance is. So one of the things that I like to make clear to the buyers, the insureds and the agents is that the, the insurance is covering the house, not the land value, not the site value, not the real estate market.

So people often will say, well, I bought my house for 600. We’re going to close on it for 600. Why’d you give me a quote for 485? Because that 600 was the real estate market. And the 485 or whatever it is, is building materials, labor, permitting costs, which is not necessarily related to the real estate market.

Right. Just not factoring the land. The site value is. What was the site value? Because some people might say, well, my townhouse, I don’t have land.

But you’re still on a site and you still have market value. Real estate market value. Right. You said the roof is one of the biggest. Is the biggest thing.

The biggest thing. Tell us a little bit more about that. I mean, I know most, most of our folks watching and listening today probably are going to deal with insurance on their own house this year or work with buyers or sellers that are dealing with it to tell us more about that. Think about it. I mean, your average homeowner’s policy is 1800-2500 annually.

So less than $3000 annually is the average homeowner’s premium. But the average claim is. Is over 25,000. So if you’ve been in the house five years, 10 years even, and you’ve paid $2,000 a year, then you say, well, I’ve paid $20,000. Why is insurance company canceling me?

Because you had one claim that was $60,000, and it will take them from now until eternity to make their money back. So they, they look at you and go, you’re not a good risk because they, too, are in it to make money. Right. It’s, you know, it’s not a charity, it’s not a grant, or like, they’re trying to make money. So they’re betting that your house will burn down and you’re betting that it won’t at the end of the day.

Yeah. And so it, so it’s just numbers. It’s a numbers game just like everything else. The rate, the. The difference in the cost of claims and what they’re charging you.

Well, speaking of that, like, what. Why are the rates so high today? Like, why. Why are buyers so shocked? I just told you.

Yeah, seriously. I mean, it’s just like the amount of money paid in versus the amount of money paid out. I’m joking. But really, that’s it. Money in by the consumer, money out by the insurance carrier.

Right. But I mean, you told me like maybe a couple months ago that across the state, I mean, the rates went up what, 40, 50% almost, right? Not exactly, but across the board, you know, they could say, well, we had like, the rate bureau now is going to have a 7% increase in July. Well, that 7% is on your premium. So you’re say your house is covered.

That same house we were just talking about covered at485.7% on top of that premium. But they may increase the coverage amount to 530 next year. In effect, they didn’t increase the premium. They took your coverage up. And by doing that, that 7% just rode with it up there.

Does that make sense? Yeah. No, it does. Yeah. As it’s just like inflation, right?

Yes. As the cost of items go up, prices go up. Yeah. And again, it’s real simple. It’s just money in versus money out.

And at the end of the day, I’m not advocating for insurance carriers. I just want to disclose and help educate the buyer or the consumer to go. This is what it is. You know, don’t shoot the messenger. I just want you to know.

Yeah. What would you say is different about you, specifically as an insurance broker compared to, you know, someone at State Farm and things like that? They’re captive agents. So I’ve been a captive agent 20 years ago. So you’re either in or out at those agencies.

With us, we’re independent, so we can shop around and get the best rate and match up with the best coverage and the best rate and especially for where we are at dash. And we’re local, but super local to these DASH agents. I mean, you know, all day long, off and on, people can reach out and walk up and actually touch us and ask us questions all day, which is helpful and it helps us know. Obviously, this is what the consumer is wanting to know or wanting to talk about or wanting to inquire about. And then we’re right there.

Literally steps away. You know, I know I do it a lot. Yeah, you do it, everybody. And it’s fine. That’s what we want.

But we really want to provide a service. Obviously, we want as much business as we can get, of course, but we want to provide a service. You, the DASH agents, get your thousand stars, you know. Yeah. I mean, honestly, like, that’s how we like to work with our clients, to be.

To provide a good level of service for them and to be the face of our businesses, to really take representation and ownership of our businesses. Right. And that’s. That’s kind of what you do at. At Pillar.

You know, you. You’re present for us. You host things sometimes and just like, explain about the process. And you’re always available. I mean, I know sometimes I’ve called you and talked.

We can talk a little bit about this, but ask about CLUE reports. For instance, I know you did this as an agent, but when I show a house, I try and talk people out of houses. Right. I’m trying to look at the roof and see, like, what kind of shingle it is. Maybe guesstimate how old it is based off of the way it looks and, you know, three tab shingle, architectural shingle, all those different things, and look at that and then potentially bring that information back to you.

So tell me a little bit about a CLUE report I’ve asked you about. That Clue report is Clue Comprehensive Loss Underwrite. What it really is saying is this house has had X amount of claims or no claims. And of those claims, it would say wind, water, fire, theft, vandalism, and the amount. And that, that may be good.

Sometimes you will have a wind claim that will say $20,000. Well, that’s probably the roof, and you got a new roof, so that is not necessarily a bad thing. Right. But then you might see a water claim and you go, what is that? And then you go, oh, he’s got poly pipes.

So they had $10,000 water claim. So that is just a window into, like, of the product you’re buying. You’re like, what’s. What’s been going on with this used car, if you will. You know, you’re taking it to the mechanic to check it out, is what it is.

I can’t tell you exactly, like, when it will say wind and it’s the amount. That’s all I know. But you can tell like, well, if he’s got a new roof, I’m going to have to assume that that’s what it was. Right. And again, that’s not a bad thing.

It’s. And flood zones the same way. You just want to look. If you’re in a hazard. Everybody’s in a flood zone, by the way.

Yeah, that’s something we check into. Yeah, right. It’s like, is this house in a flood zone? Everybody’s in a flood zone. It’s just, are you in a hazardous flood zone?

Exactly. So. And then it’s. The mortgage company will force you to have Flood insurance, if it’s on your property or touches your house, it’s a mortgage question. A lot of agents will ask us, does this house have to have flood insurance?

Well, for us, no house has to have it. But the lender might require you to have it, right? We think you should have it. But it’s a lender question really. At the end of the day when you’re trying to get to closing now, what does that typical premium look like for flood insurance?

So hazardous flood insurance for, for just a normal neighborhood, $500,000 house is probably going to be two, three grand a year. Okay. Not in a hazardous flood zone. $400. Gotcha.

Big, big difference. That’s federally regulated too. So. Right. That’s all with fema.

Right. Army Corps Engineers, they kind of draw them and all that stuff. So with the hazardous. So what’s like, what. Could you maybe share with the audience, their listeners, just the.

I know we talked about hazardous and, and non hazardous, but like, what is the main criteria? Like there’s like a creek in the backyard. There’s like a, a big pond or backs up to a lake. Like, what are the main even, even that you’ve seen? Even places you wouldn’t believe, like downtown Raleigh.

Yeah. Crabtree Creek, for example. There’s so many areas that you can just tell, like, look like creeks or streams or small rivers. But historically they’ve had rising water. So that’s what flood damage is.

Unlike if a pipe burst in your kitchen, floods your kitchen, you know, that’s water damage. But if you have rising water, that’s flood. That’s the difference. So that’s, that’s when a flood policy would respond. Water from a creek rises up in your house, you call your insurance agent, you don’t have flood insurance.

There will say, sorry, that’s flood. That’s crazy. Yeah, yeah, I know. A lot of the, like when Hurricane Matthew and Florence came through, like a lot of the, like cities down in like Warsaw area, they had a lot of issues like that where it’s like, oh, well, you didn’t have it. Well, think about this.

Last year or year before, in Ash in the mountains of North Carolina, all the flooding. Yep. Who would have thought all the flooding in a. That elevation. Yeah, it was terrible.

So, yeah, it’s flood insurance. Pretty important because we’re trying to get you, the dash agent to. Let’s see. First of all, when you’re an onboarding, you want to know the home like a home inspector. That’s right.

Know it like an inspector. Yeah. You want to know the contract like a closing attorney. That’s right. Yep.

Then you’re going to want to know the value of a house. Like the appraiser. Now we want to get you to look at a house like an insurance agent. That’s. Really think of yourself.

I’m going to add it to my lingo, my jargon, your repertoire. I can speak insurance language. That’s right. Riveting. What’s the.

What’s the craziest. If you’re allowed to say. I mean, you know, you might have to kill me if you. If you tell me, but what’s the. The wildest claim that you’ve ever had to deal with.

It might not have to be like. You don’t have to tell me any specifics, but like, you know, if. Was it like aluminum wiring? Was it like some curiosity. A duck.

A duck. Like a quack? Like a. Yeah, okay. Like a duck.

Yeah. Got in somebody’s chimney. Okay. Couldn’t get it out. He had.

How would you say that? Soot suit all over. Yeah. And it came out and just damaged the whole. While they were gone.

Wow. While they were gone. Oh, my goodness. Whole house. Duck died.

Passed away. Sure. But did a lot of damage to the house. They had a really low. It was an older couple back in a long time ago.

They had a low deductible. It was like $250 deductible, but it was $10,000 worth of damage. Duck. A duck. Yeah.

Well, I’m kind of glad they didn’t like that chimney because obviously if the duck died from inhaling all that stuff that was in there, that would have been. Duck died because he was hungry and they were gone for a long time. Oh, yeah. It’s awkward. He couldn’t find anything to eat.

That poor duck. He’s passed away. What do ducks eat? What do ducks eat? I don’t know.

It’s kind of like that question, what does the fox say? Right. Oh, man. That’s gonna. That’s really gonna tap into some things.

What’s. What do you think the most common insurance issue is that can derail a deal insurance wise is. I mean, again, it’s gonna be the roof. It’s gonna be. So at the end of the day, I.

What I think derails most real estate contracts is if that person can qualify for a loan or not to start with. Absolutely. But then when we get qualified and get to the end of the day, the next thing, and this is a fact, the number two thing that breaks the deal is something with Insurance, Right. Past claims, the age of the roof or something, some underwriting issue. Trees touching the home that they won’t clean up.

So it starts with the roof and then prior claims. But you should know, you should know that info before you get there. So you could call 1-800-or- go online and get a quote all day long on your house. But until you underwrite it and go to that clue report and get the final rate, you don’t know all these things. So you might show up at closing and like, oh, by the way.

Yeah, I know you thought was 1500. Now it’s 2800 because we did all the underwriting, but we do that up front. We take the time to do all of that, which is kind of painful, but it’s worth it because then it’s static for the most part. Right. And that makes sense.

I know typically you guys like the, the first thing is you have conditional approval on a house. Right. If you’re getting a loan. And then from there, the policy, you guys, typically our agents try and get someone to talk to you earlier in the process to, you know, at least get that introduction to meet Randy and Jesse and. And then from there there’s an opportunity to select the coverage you want.

Get the policy bound that. That happens on closing day. Right. The policy is bound on closing. And then from there, usually we bind that.

When the customer says, I want to go with you. I like that rate. Whatever they have questions, we answer. We can bind that policy in the future. So from that point on, the earlier, within 30 days, we can bind it.

We could bind it on, on day five and you could have that coverage ready to go at closing. That’s not going to change. But versus sometimes people forget they wait to the last minute or they just simply got too much going on and then they call us and we can bind it right then on the spot, too. But just to get your ducks in a row. Yeah.

You want, you want to do that early on and get that underwriting out of the way. You don’t want any surprises at closing. Absolutely. What do you think are some of the common questions that agents should be asking you before they go under contract? The agent asked the insurance.

I think if I’m, if I’m a realtor out there and I think my client likes this house. Or just like you said about the clue report, maybe not so much the clue report, but I want to say, does this roof look insurable to you? Sure. Because it’s such a big deal. Zach, roofs are so.

That rocks the boat More than anything in our industry today on homeowners insurance is the. So I know we talked a lot about roofs already, but I’ve heard a lot recently that if the roof is less older than five years old, it can be harder to get a claim. Not a claim, but harder to get insurance on. It just depends on the provider. Right.

In the carrier it’s rated differently, 0 to 5, 5 to 10, 10 to 15. And after 15 it gets really tricky. Then, then there’s a. We have the ability to write the, the policy for a home where it’s ACV on the roof. ACV is actual cash value.

So everything is, everything’s replacement cost except the roof and that’s depreciated cost. However, lenders don’t like that. They want everything replacement cost. So. But that’s sometimes a negotiating tool for you as an agent to go, hey, I’m having a hard time getting insurance or insurance is crazy on this house.

What the sellers are going to go, well, we don’t have a, a tough time getting it. I’m like, yeah, because you’ve been here 30 years or 10 years or whatever and you got an existing policy, we’re trying to get a new policy. You got an 18 year old roof. It’s not specific to this person. That’s going to happen wherever you go.

Right. So that might be some negotiating tools or levers you can pull in that real estate process. Yeah, I remember I had a listing probably six months ago that had kind of an older roof. And the buyer’s agent said that they loved the house but they wouldn’t move forward on it because it was an older roof. They might not get to be able to get insurance on it.

And I was like, oh, maybe I should connect you with my guy. He probably could get you insurance on it. I mean, and then, and sometimes it will be. Could you get insurance? Yes, but the rate’s going to be high.

So does that, what is it DTI does your debt to income. Yeah. Yep. For the lender. So that might flip the payment.

It could throw everything off. Right. I could change, you know, if it’s, if it’s double the policy or double the cost of what your, your taxes are, for instance, like for the house or very, it’s just very high. Right. Like if it’s for like double what it typically would be.

Right. So if your policy was 2500, it’s actually like 5000. Right. That really changes your monthly payment and can affect things. Yeah.

And we have, I mean we have a couple lenders that are kind of like Arctic Monkeys. You know that, the song Arctic Monkeys. No, I don’t. It’s a group. They sing.

Why you only call me when you’re high? Oh, okay. No, so I’m terrible with the names of songs and the people that name that sing the songs. But they’ll call us at the end, you know, right before closing to fix that dti. Hey, can you help me?

Our DTI is off. We know your independent agent. Can you shop around and get us a low quote? We call this Arctic Monkeys because why, why you only call us when you’re high. You know, why don’t you.

Yeah, for say there. I thought those were the lyrics. I was like, those actually really flow well. It. No, no song.

You can look it up. Arctic Monkeys. That’s the group. That’s the group. I have to take a look at it.

What, what should buyers like? When should they typically start the process of finding out about insurance? Really? When they see the house, when they identify the house that they want to make an offer on. Now, that could still be a little early, but if you have a good realtor, if you have a dash Realtor, that, that realtor is going to give you the green light to go move forward and make that offer or that realtor is going to look at that roof and go, let’s call pillar first, right.

And see what they have to say. Because that roof looks a little tricky stains on or whatever. So right there in between. If you, if you don’t have a great realtor, if you don’t have a dash Realtor, you might want to, you know, make sure before you make that offer. But more than likely, if you got a dash Realtor, they’re going to be able to identify that.

Ask us, have that in place or get out in front of that and it’ll be much smoother. But realistically, a broad stroke is once you under contract right away. But you’re getting bombarded with everything. You need a home inspector. Do you want to get a survey, blah, blah, blah.

And then here we are here, insurance quote. You know, they’re like, that’s just one more thing that becomes white noise. But that white noise becomes pretty loud there for the lender and for the closing attorney. So you’re going to have to get. I mean, you need to identify what things are really important, what you could put on the back burner for a week or so.

Now, what typically helps you to quote quotes? Faster manpower, really. I mean we have somebody that all they do is quote. That’s all they do all day long, quote and then quote, renewal quotes. So one of the things we put our flag in the ground about is like, hey, if you go with us on insurance every year at renewal, your premium will go up, I promise you.

Yep. That’s just the world we live in. But what we’re going to do is quote it around, find the best coverage, find the best rate. And that’s dreadfully painful. Painful because you’re like, I got an existing client here and I got to go.

I’m going to swivel chair over here and give you two more options. And then if you want to go with that, we got to create work. But that’s the service we. That’s the world we live in. You know, that’s what we do.

So just swivel chair and just quoting that at every renewal to find the best rate. What was your question again? I just was quoting. We have somebody that does all our new quotes and then somebody that does all our renewal quotes. New quotes.

Last weekend was a big weekend for Dash. I think there was 20 plus maybe even 30 in there from Friday night to Monday morning. Yeah. And then spring. Yeah.

And then the renewal quotes. There’s probably 80 to 100 of renewal quotes in there. They’re not quite as time sensitive, but they have to be done. And. But I guess, like when, when agents are trying to.

Or I guess the buyer, whoever trying to get what things, information can they give you to quote, quote faster in that instance. Oh, my goodness, I wish I could get everybody to give us their date of birth and their current address. Dob in the current address, man. Date of birth? I don’t know.

I can’t tell you how many times we’ll see. 11 2001, 181160 or 1126 Fed one. That was 1901 before. Right. That someone put in.

It’s. And what happens is we can give. Just like I said, you can call 1-800-get-an insurance quote and you can get that vanilla rate. But if you give us your date of birth and your current address, I can get you a really, really accurate quote. Whether you like it or not, it’s going to be accurate.

But if you call us up and say, hey, my name is Joe Smith, 1180, I’m buying 101 Main Street. That’s all you give me? I can give you a quote. You may. You might like it up front, but, you know, two weeks before closing, when I get the real info, you probably won’t like it.

Right. It won’t Be the same. Right. It could get better. Right.

So we can make your job easier by accurate date of birth. Accurate. And I think sometimes clients or buyers are a little reluctant to say why do they need my date of birth? And, and I’m like, you’re buying a half million dollar house. You, you gotta think somebody’s gonna ask you when your birthday is.

Maybe I won’t send you a card. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I like to send my past clients. Yeah.

Birthday cards. Right. But date of birth and current address would really help. Awesome. We’ve got, it’s 50.

50. We probably have 50 that. 50 that do. Some don’t. And then we, we adjust it.

But we’ve got somebody quoting all the time who’s really, really good. And I did. She tags them as like, hey, here’s the quote. But just know we don’t have date of birth. So we present it that way.

Right. And that’s good, that’s, that’s a good way to like just get things done and make sure that we get accurate quotes. Quotes for our clients. Because at the end of the day when you buy a house, you want to partner with the right team. And I mean I got my insurance through you guys too.

And I, I. One thing that Randy does great is that he keeps other insurance providers honest. He honestly like goes out and tries to re quote it and get me the best deal possible. You saved me thousands of dollars, you know. So I’m going to give you some rapid fire questions and they’re example myths.

Okay. So all home insurance policies are basically the same. No, not even close. That’s not true. Some are replacement costs, some are actual cash value.

Some leave endorsements out, some give you extra coverage. Not the same. Okay. Flood insurance is only needed near water. Not true.

We just discussed that. Yep, yep. Order homes always cost more to insure. True, true. That’s actually true.

Okay. Insurance quotes don’t vary that much. That’s not true. That is false. Excellent.

Yeah. Well, Randy, I just want to thank you for coming on the dashcast podcast and. Yeah, it’s a hard thing to say quickly. Dash Cast podcast. Right.

Four syllables. DC PC. That’s right. DC PC. Hey, it’s kind of like AC dc.

We could start our own thing. Right? And we were talking about music before this. Maybe we start a little band together, you and me. Highway to hell.

There we go. Highway to insurance. Excellent. If you guys ever need any insurance policies, you can reach out to Randy at Piller Insurance. And I wanted to thank everyone for joining us today.

Leave us a like comment, share and subscribe all those fun things. Hit the like button. Share it with your friends, subscribe, your family, and anyone you know so that they can learn more about what we’re talking about here.