Sarah Ingles, REALTOR® SRES® · Fathom Realty
Before I sold real estate, I spent more than ten years inside the property and casualty insurance industry, eventually earning the CPCU designation — the highest credential in property risk underwriting. That decade of studying how carriers actually price and decline homes is what lets me catch insurance issues in older Des Moines metro homes that almost every other agent walks right past. If you are buying a home built before 1990, the inspection is not your biggest risk. The buyer's insurance carrier is. Here is what I look for on every older-home walkthrough, and why each one can quietly kill the deal at the closing table.
The single most common deal-killer on older Des Moines homes is the roof. Most Iowa-admitted homeowner carriers begin tightening underwriting at 15 years on a 3-tab asphalt roof and 20 years on architectural shingle. By 25 years, almost every standard carrier will either decline the risk outright or place the roof on Actual Cash Value (ACV) coverage.
ACV matters enormously in Iowa because we sit in one of the highest hail-loss corridors in the country. On a 25-year roof under ACV, a $20,000 hail-driven replacement can pay out around $4,000 after depreciation. The buyer eats the rest. When you are touring a house and the listing photos look great, get the install date in writing before you write an offer.
Federal Pacific Electric (FPE) Stab-Lok panels were installed in millions of American homes from the 1950s through the early 1980s. Zinsco panels had a parallel run in the 1960s and 1970s. Both have documented failure-to-trip problems — breakers that don't disconnect during a fault, creating a fire risk that has been studied by CPSC and major underwriters for decades.
Almost every Iowa-admitted homeowner carrier will either decline a home with an FPE or Zinsco panel or require it be replaced before binding coverage. Replacement in the Des Moines metro typically runs $2,500–$4,500. If you are buying and the inspection turns up one of these panels, you need to negotiate replacement before closing or expect your insurance quote to come back uninsurable.
This is the gap that most buyers do not know they have until the claim is denied. The standard ISO homeowner policy excludes water that backs up through sewers, drains, or sump pump failures. In the Des Moines metro that exclusion bites hard — most older neighborhoods (Beaverdale, Drake, Sherman Hill, Highland Park, much of South Side) have combined storm and sanitary sewer lines that surcharge during heavy rain. Almost every basement has a sump pit. Almost no buyer adds the endorsement.
A water backup endorsement typically costs $40–$120 a year and pays $5,000–$25,000 per occurrence depending on the carrier. When you are buying a 1920 bungalow with a finished basement and a sump, that endorsement is not optional — it is the difference between a $15,000 finish-out replacement and a denied claim.
If you are buying a home from an estate — the owner has passed away and the heirs are selling — the home has often been vacant for months while probate progressed. This matters because nearly every homeowner policy suspends or restricts coverage after 30–60 consecutive days of vacancy. The new buyer typically binds a standard owner-occupied policy at closing, but if the home was already vacant for 90+ days, that policy may not respond to a loss that happens between closing and physical move-in.
Worse, an interim event — a burst pipe in February, a vandalism break-in, a smoldering electrical issue — can be denied under the vacancy clause even though the buyer thought they were covered. On estate purchases this is the gap that most often surfaces, since the home may already have been vacant for months before the new buyer ever sees it. Vacant dwelling policies and specific vacancy endorsements exist precisely for the window between binding and physical occupancy — they are the part of the market that a standard owner-occupied policy is not built to cover.
Insurance and financing are intertwined. Every conventional, FHA, VA, and USDA mortgage requires bound hazard insurance as a condition of closing. If the carrier identifies serious deferred maintenance — a roof that is failing, active leaks, broken windows, peeling exterior paint on an FHA appraisal, a non-functioning furnace in October — they will refuse to bind. When the carrier refuses to bind, the lender refuses to fund. The deal collapses at the closing table.
The common deferred-maintenance items I see kill financing on older Des Moines homes:
A pre-offer walkthrough with someone who reads houses through an underwriter's eyes — not just an inspector's — catches these before you are 30 days in and emotionally committed.
For buyers (and the adult children helping their parents buy), my recommended sequence on any pre-1990 Des Moines home:
CPCU stands for Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter — the top professional designation in property and casualty insurance, earned by passing eight college-level exams over multiple years. Fewer than 100,000 people in the United States hold it, and almost all of them work inside insurance companies. When you buy an older home, the deal can die because the buyer's carrier won't insure it. A REALTOR® who has spent a decade in property insurance underwriting before becoming an agent can spot the issues that would kill your insurance quote before you write the offer, not after.
The recurring list in Central Iowa: roofs past the 20-year carrier cutoff (often pushed onto Actual Cash Value or declined outright), Federal Pacific Stab-Lok and Zinsco electrical panels, knob-and-tube and aluminum branch wiring, polybutylene plumbing in homes built 1978–1995, galvanized supply lines, no sump pump or no water backup endorsement in flood-prone basements, prior water or hail claims on the CLUE report, and oil tanks or buried fuel tanks on acreages. Any single one of these can move a home from preferred to surplus-lines pricing or make it uninsurable through standard admitted carriers.
Most Iowa-admitted carriers start tightening underwriting at 15 years on a 3-tab asphalt roof and 20 years on architectural shingle. By 25 years almost every standard carrier will either decline the risk or place the roof on Actual Cash Value, which means depreciation comes out of any future claim payment. In Iowa's hail corridor, ACV on a 25-year roof can mean a $20,000 replacement turns into a $4,000 check after depreciation.
Yes. Federal Pacific Stab-Lok panels (made roughly 1950s–1980s) and Zinsco panels (1960s–1970s) have documented failure-to-trip issues that create fire risk. Most Iowa carriers will either decline the home or require the panel be replaced before binding coverage. The replacement runs roughly $2,500–$4,500 in the Des Moines metro. If you are buying and the inspection identifies one of these panels, expect to negotiate replacement before closing or face an insurance denial.
Standard homeowner policies in Iowa exclude water that backs up through sewers, drains, or sump pump failures. This is one of the most common claim denials in the Des Moines metro because most basements have a sump and most older neighborhoods have combined storm and sanitary lines that surcharge in heavy rain. A water backup endorsement typically costs $40–$120 a year and runs $5,000–$25,000 in coverage. Buying an older home with a finished basement without it is a gap most buyers don't realize they have until the claim is denied.
Most homeowner policies suspend or limit coverage once a home has been vacant for 30–60 consecutive days. When you buy an estate property — a home where the owner has passed away and the heirs are selling — the home may have already been vacant for months while probate progressed. If a fire, vandalism, or burst pipe happens before you take occupancy, the standard policy you bound at closing may deny the claim under the vacancy clause. Vacant dwelling policies and specific vacancy endorsements exist precisely for this window between binding and physical occupancy — they are the part of the market that a standard owner-occupied policy is not built to cover.
Yes. Every conventional, FHA, VA, and USDA mortgage requires bound hazard insurance as a condition of closing. If the carrier identifies deferred maintenance — a failing roof, active leaks, broken windows, peeling exterior paint on an FHA appraisal, or a non-functioning furnace — they will refuse to bind, the lender will refuse to fund, and the deal falls apart at the closing table. This is why a pre-offer insurance walkthrough on older homes matters more than almost any other due diligence step.
Free 30-minute consultation. I'll walk you through what to look for on the specific older Des Moines home you're considering — before you write the offer.
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