Get a CLUE before you buy at the Lake of the Ozarks

The most important step for a Lake of the Ozarks real estate buyer is to hire the best Buyer’s Broker in the area.  The next most important step for buying a Lake of the Ozarks home is to get a CLUE report.  CLUE stands for Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange. It is a comprehensive database of personal property information relating mainly to insurance claims on private property.

Why is this important to see this report on a home before you buy at the Lake of the Ozarks?  Lake homes often sit unoccupied for long peroids of time, and often over long cold winters.  When a pipe breaks or a leak develops at your primary home, the usual maximum amount of time before it is discovered is a few hours.   When this happens at a vacant home, it might be months before it is discovered, allowing for much more damage and a higher insurance claim. 

A CLUE report contains information about either an insured or a property. The key information on the report is the claims history of the individual or the property. This section includes a list of all claims made in the last 7 years. The claim history report includes the date of the claim, the name of the insurance company involved, policy number, claim number, address, cause of loss, amounts paid, status of the claim, and the name of the insured and the claimant. The report also identifies parties that have received a copy of the report, typically over the most recent 2 years. It is important to note that the CLUE report details the "claim history" of a given consumer. Adverse information that is more than seven years old generally may not be reported.

You should, with the help of a knowledgeable buyer’s broker, want to verify this information against the Sellers Disclosure that is provided on the property to gauge a seller’s level of disclosure and honesty.  Another reason to verify this information is that the claims made by the seller can have an adverse effect on the buyer’s ability to get affordable insurance on the property. 

I’d speculate that less than 1% of buyer’s agents at the Lake of the Ozarks recommend their clients get a CLUE report as part of the inspection process when buying a home.  Using a buyer’s agent doesn’t cost you anything, because the commission is paid by the seller, but it can sure save a lot of time, heartache, headaches, and money.    

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