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In Texas, insurers are watching your home from above. It could cost you coverage. (www.kut.org)

submitted 1 week ago by Powderhorn@beehaw.org to c/usnews@beehaw.org

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Tracy Gartenmann had no idea the company that insured her home against wildfires, hailstorms and high winds was also spying on her.

Until she got an email.

In January, a representative for Travelers Insurance emailed Gartenmann to say the company would not renew the policy she’d had on her home in Austin for more than a decade.

Trees had edged too close to her roof, a company representative said, endangering the home. How did they know? Attached to the email were two photos from above Gartenmann’s house. The representative said they had gotten the sky-high images from a third-party company.

“I thought it was a scam,” said Gartenmann. Once she realized the email was real, her reaction changed: “It felt like an infringement on my rights.”

KUT News spoke with homeowners, industry experts and insurance watchdogs, and reviewed hundreds of pages of complaints and state filings. Documents obtained through public records requests confirm that insurers in Texas are using aerial photos taken by satellites and aircraft to determine if they want to keep insuring homes.

Prescient story to run into just after the strongest storm I've ever experienced rolled through. Thankfully, the warned 3" hail turned out to be marble sized where I'm parked. But the rain was absolutely insane, and 60mph winds in a van isn't fun.

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[–] HumbleFlamingo@beehaw.org 2 points 1 week ago

IDK if I trust it to be done well in texas, or florida….

But if it wasn’t an adversarial, and respected privacy, I would really appreciate an impartial third party letting me know I have a missing roof tile, or a fire-hazard on my property.

I got lucky a few years ago. A neighbor alerted me to a broken sprinkler. Instead of a $200 water bill, it would have been much worse.

I just have fears of the insurance company banking some photo evidence, letting me keep paying them, and then 2 years later refuse to pay a claim and dust off pictures of a risk they knew of but didn’t bother to tell me about. Like we’ve know about this fire risk for years so now that you had a fire we’re not paying up.