Living in a rental apartment while having renter's insurance can keep you from feeling stressed about the property. You do not have to worry about losing a property that you own.
But, when you are looking to become a homeowner, you may want to do everything that you can to minimize the risk of property damage. This means you will need to consider a few important details so that you feel confident about all the single family homes you look at regarding damage risk.
Earthquakes
Although you will not be able to predict when an earthquake happens, there are several locations that have extra damage risk from earthquakes. While many homeowners will not experience a devastating earthquake in their lifetime, you may want to avoid this risk altogether. For instance, you can avoid looking at properties around the San Andreas Fault and the Cascadia Fault.
This will still give you access to millions of homes around the country. If you are flexible with home buying, you will easily find properties that you like almost anywhere in the country.
Storms
Regular rainstorms are not going to cause major problems for most homes. But, you may be worried about storms that cause flooding. When heavy rainfall occurs, some lakes or rivers may start to overflow, which is one way that your property could sustain damage from a storm.
A hurricane is also a possible cause of flooding. This can come from a substantial amount of rainfall that your neighborhood is not able to support with sufficient drainage. Another possibility is storm surge, which you can avoid by looking at properties that are away from the ocean.
Trees
Some property damage risks do not have to do with natural disasters. For instance, the trees on or around your property could pose a risk to your home in the right situation. A windy enough day could uproot a tree and if it is close enough to your house, it could cause major damage.
To keep trees from being a problem, you may want to look for properties without many trees or find ones that have short trees in which the branches cannot cause much damage or any at all.
Property damage is not something that you will enjoy handling as a homeowner. So, it makes sense to analyze all these qualities of homes, neighborhoods, and regions so that you can begin property shopping with confidence in all the houses that you put offers on.