Rooted in Care

Keith: So trees are not at fault or non fault unless the tree is unhealthy. And if a tree is unhealthy and you see it's unhealthy, as a neighbor or whatever, you send a letter to the household where the tree is at saying, hey, your tree looks like it's dying. It's got some problems. You need to fix this. And if they ignore it and then that tree then falls and does something, now they are responsible.

Chantel: Welcome to Rooted in Care, where we amplify the voices of our clients and dive into how tree care plays an integral role in our everyday lives.

Buddy Marshall: Whether you're familiar with a tree or new to our community, we're here to bring the service industry together to explore the deep rooted connection between people, trees and the environment.

Chantel: I'm Shantelle Davis, chief Revenue officer at A Tree.

Buddy Marshall: I'm Buddy Marshall, VP of Commercial sales at a.

Chantel: We'll dig into what matters most to you. Your input shapes how tree care enhances the beauty of our communities while protecting our natural surroundings.

Buddy Marshall: Let's get to the root of thoughtful tree care for your property, your city, your home.

Chantel: Welcome Keith Jackson. He's the owner of kstj. Ooh, I did it right. Insurance Services out of Northern California. And Keith is actually a good friend. So thank you, Keith, for joining us today.

Buddy Marshall: Yeah, welcome, Keith. My pleasure.

Chantel: Should be fun for our viewers. Do you mind telling us a little bit about who you are and what KSJT Insurance is and little history about you?

Keith: So I'll just start with KSJT Insurance is the initials of my family is Keith Stephanie Jaden Tate. I used to have my name as Keith Jackson Insurance Agency, but then I got tired of seeing my name all the time. And so I figure initials, even though it's not a radio show or anything of that nature. But I started this company roughly about 15 years ago, and it's probably been the best thing or best decision that I decided to do it was either do this or go into medical device sales. So I'm glad I did this.

Chantel: Right choice, Right choice. Well, the reason we wanted to have you on and thank you for that is we're doing a whole kind of feature on defensible space. Obviously, you know, there's been a ton of fires. Keith lives in Northern California, so we're always getting fires. And so what we want to do for a lot of our viewers is just help them understand how insurance and defensible space and tree work actually tie in together. You know this, Keith, right? When people hear the word insurance, they think you guys are, you know, the worst people out there. So we really want to break that misconception and just kind of explain what you do and how you help homeowners and how you help commercial properties. Really understand how to have the right insurance, not pay too high in premiums, not get non renewals.

Chantel: And that's kind of our goal of today. So I'll have Buddy kick it off and we can dive right in and then you can tell us a little bit about how you think your business really plays a role into tree care. And to our people, thank you, Keith.

Buddy Marshall: So much for joining us. We appreciate it. If you could just start by explaining what defensible space means in the context of insuring a home or commercial property in California.

Keith: So defensible space depending on commercial or residential means, it's a little bit different. There's obviously a definition of how far it needs to be, what it is, et cetera. But something Chantelle said earlier about being able to keep your insurance rather than losing your insurance, that's the key in today's market for insurance. Let's say that on your homeowner's insurance that right now they set these parameters like you're in a wildfire area or you're not in a wildfire area. So with those parameters alone, if you already have an insurance policy, it is something that you need to do. You have to do.

Keith: I tried to explain to all my policyholders, is that you have to have that defensible space, whether if it's five feet, you know, your trees cut away from the roof of your house, whether if you have bark or a flower bed or something within five feet at the bottom, you need to remove that, you need to put in rock, get rid of the bark. All these little things are huge. Because if you actually watch videos with defensible space and wildfire and just wildfires in general, a five foot at the base of your home, having rock or concrete instead of bushes that you know are flammable or bark or anything of that nature could save your home. There's no if, ands or buts, or it's just something you absolutely have to do.

Keith: It's imperative in order to keep your insurance that you need to take care of your home. A big misconception that people have on their homes is some people have no idea what their insurance actually covers. And I'm like, no, that's called maintenance. You need to do that yourself. This is in case something bad happens and you don't have all the money to afford if your house burns down or if your roof is leaking and it gets into your home and all these other, you know, crazy things. So the misconception on insurance is still a learning process just for the general public.

Chantel: Yeah, that's huge. I think you nailed it when you said that, right. When you get the initial insurance, you're doing all the maintenance, right. You're making sure the trees are far enough away, the shrubs are not around, and then you soon, you're done. You soon. Once you get insurance, you never have to worry about it again. And people tend to forget that there is that annual maintenance, especially. Right. Trees, shrubs, plants, they all grow. So they're going to get bigger over time. And we see that a lot with our clients. They go, we don't want to. Why are we doing annual. I'm like, well, your trees got bigger. Now they are close to your building. Right.

Chantel: And I think that's something that's really key, Keith, that a lot of people don't know is you've got to maintain it every year because if you don't, you know what can happen, right. That nice, cute little palm tree is going to be bigger and over the house, or that cute shrub in front of your house is going to be the whole front of it. And so that's really important. And I know you and I have talked in the past about some of these insurance companies are actually asking for videos. Right. So, so what are you seeing now with homeowners or multifamily deal with a lot of apartments and HOAs. What are they requiring now? Because I know you mentioned videos. Is it like, of your property or what. What does that look like?

Keith: Yeah. So now there's a lot of companies that are doing aerial shots. They're using drones.

Chantel: Yeah, High tech there. Wow.

Keith: Yeah. So they're basically, they're looking for the trees overhanging, they're looking for moss growth on roofs. They're looking for so many, like clutter in the yards, any kind of trip and fall. They are so on top of insurance now when before client could call and you can go online, you can Google it, Zillow it, Redfin, whatever, get all the stuff and you can buy in a policy right then and there. Not anymore. There's a lot of carriers where you have to get pictures of the roof, you got to show a deed or a utility bill. And this is all just to get a quote.

Chantel: That's just to get a quote.

Keith: That's just to get a quote. Like that's some carriers and then some carriers and make you wait 14, 15 days before they underwrite it and then give you'll have a quote, you'll know what it is, but you don't know if they're going to accept it or not. People just need to understand if you have insurance now. And I have a lot of people that call me and they're like, hey, my insurance went up, I'm shopping it. And I was like, okay, give me your address, I'll punch your address. And I'm like, well, you kind of in a wildfire area. They're saying it's wildfire concern. If I were you, I would just maintain the property. They're not non renewing you. I would keep the policy. And they're all expensive right now.

Buddy Marshall: Well, and that leads me to my next point was the impact on premiums. So if a homeowner or property manager invests in creating solutions to creating defensible space, how does that affect their premiums? And can they possibly get a discount or is it just going to keep climbing whether they fix it or not? You know, get the.

Keith: So that's a good question. So as of right now, the whole point of having the defensible space and taking care of your property is to maintain your insurance first and foremost. So the discounts come in. So everybody gets charged the same rate. This is what people have a misconception with insurance. We all get charged where exactly everybody's the same. As soon as you have a claim, you lose a discount. If you do have a tile roof compared to asphalt roof or metal roof, there's a discount. There's like a 5% discount depending on what kind of roof you have. Because it's fire retarded. Everybody pays the same, but you get discounts to make it less expensive. So to answer your question, is that rates I don't see coming down anytime soon at all.

Keith: I see them stabilizing and I think everybody's going to be in the next year to two years having the same rate. Then it's going to come down to what agent or what company do you want to work with. And then as companies actually start making money because they haven't made money in probably about eight years and they're only looking to make 1%. So everybody, you know, it's a big pot of funds and once those funds go away, your rate goes up. So if they're not making at least 1%, it's a wrap. That's another misconception people have with rates and the costs and things of that nature.

Chantel: You know, that's so crazy, Keith, because we hear from a lot of our clients. So a lot of our clients that do the annual maintenance, especially in the hoas, they're trying to defer their maintenance because they're saying, hey, our insurance premium went up X amount of dollars. We can't afford to do the tree care work and we're almost taken back. Like, hold on a minute. So your insurance premium went up, therefore you're going to cut costs on your tree care? Because there is a misconception that tree care is just to beautify the property. They don't realize that it is part of that whole defensible space. And I know when you and I were talking offline, you mentioned something with HOA that I think would be really good for our viewers around. I think it was firewise. Right.

Chantel: The importance of being like a firewise community. Correct. That's what we would love to learn a little bit about. Because again, yes, trees are really pretty when they're well maintained, but they bring so much more value to ensure that your property is safe and secure.

Buddy Marshall: Yes. Educate us on firewise because I think we need to be able to explain it as well when we're talking to our clients.

Keith: That's huge. And it's been big for a year or two now, if not a little bit longer. And it's going to get even bigger here in the future. I had lunch with Carrier last week and I started asking the question because there is bureaucracy in California that is supposed to allow insurance carriers to have a pin or pencil to write whatever rate they want to write so that they don't have to be on California Fair Plan. So talking to the carrier, he's telling me that if, you know, you're a firewise community, meaning you have your trees cut six feet up, they're 10ft apart, you don't have bushes against people's houses and HOAs, things of that nature. Your insurance, number one, you'll be insurable without California Fair Plan, which automatically makes your insurance cheaper and it's better insurance.

Keith: So people just need to start appreciating and taking care of their homes and doing these things. I know everybody hates insurance companies. We're like the devil.

Chantel: You're so lovable and charming. I wanted to change the stigma around insurance.

Buddy Marshall: I love that. You're right. It's. No one wants insurance until they need it.

Keith: Correct.

Buddy Marshall: And they don't want to pay for it. Up front, they want.

Chantel: Yeah.

Buddy Marshall: And then they want you to just cover me.

Keith: You have people complain all the time and I can tell you what you need until I'm blue in the face, but until you experience it, there's nothing I can say.

Chantel: I mean, you tell us, Keith. I think it's kind of crazy. Before it used to be you're up in the mountains, right. You know, you're moving into a, a wildfire area. So you're almost prepared to pay the higher premiums. You may not get coverage, but with what's been going on over the last probably five years, we're noticing that you can be in an urban area and still be considered in a wildfire zone. And so to your point, you can't really escape it. It's just you have to be prepared. And that's so important. Right. Being prepared and making sure that we're putting everything in place to protect it. It might be common sense to you, right, because you live and breathe insurance.

Keith: Yeah.

Chantel: But most people, they have no idea. I'll be honest, I have no idea. I saw my policy and I said, okay, what did I pay for my house? Can they rebuild it for the same price?

Buddy Marshall: Cool.

Chantel: Like, that's all I got.

Keith: Yeah.

Chantel: You know, there's so much more there, like you said, and you mentioned something and I wanted to go back to it because I think it's really interesting for our viewers. We talked about firewise communities and homes. And I know for you and one of the communities you live in, they talk a lot about zone Zero. And something you said to us is you keep everything completely away. So for your personal home, what do you do that our other, our viewers can actually do at home to just be proactive? Even if their HOA isn't doing it right, they can still do some stuff.

Keith: Yeah. So I walk around my neighborhood and I look at my house and it's amazing what a five foot clearance for trees, for bushes, bark, or whatever the case may be from your house. Just five feet, I took it extreme. I went 10 to 15ft because that's just me. Did a little extra. But when I walk around my neighborhood for us to become a firewise community, and I've talked to the HOA because when I built my house from the ground up, they fought me literally to plant 200 more plants in trees. And I'm like, are you crazy? Like, this is what insurance companies are looking for. I send them stuff from the fire department, Cal fire, everything. And they fought me tooth and nail.

Keith: I end up having to pay an additional $3,000 for how many times I went back and forth to get my trees and shrubs and everything lessened. Because when our landscape person did the design, she just went crazy. And I'm just like, well, this isn't going to work because we're in a wildfire area. So anyway, back to all these other houses. And if you talk to clients and just people, they're like, oh, I love that bush by the window. I'm like, okay, well, that bush can burn your house down. There's gotta be some kind of sacrifice. I don't think you understand how where you live, you need to make adjustments. Unless your house burned down and rebuild it and go live in an apartment or Airbnb for 24 months and go through all the red tape and rebuild.

Keith: People just need to spend the extra time and money, and then they would have the peace of mind that if something does come rolling up the hill of a fire or anything of that nature, and you got your neighbor that has all these trees on their house, and then you have rock and concrete, Guess who the fire department's going to save? They're going to go for the rock and concrete. We can save this house because trees are cut away. You don't have any leaves or stuff in the gutters. You got rock instead of bark. Like, you're good. Like, all those things make a huge difference, especially if you're in a wildfire area.

Chantel: It's kind of funny. We just spoke to Cal fire, and that's exactly what we're talking about, is where do you go and what houses do you save? Because there is that misconception of, well, why didn't they save this neighborhood? Why didn't they save this house? Well, there's a safety for them. Right? They need to not put themselves in an unsafe environment. And then they also can determine if an ember comes onto this house, do we have the ability to save it? Right, because they have to be very smart with their water usage. And so to your point, yeah, you may have the concrete, you may have your landscape 10ft out, but best believe that fire engine is going to be right in front of your house or right in front of your property. And that's. That's huge.

Keith: Yeah, that's. That's when you see, like, you know, there's wildfires and then there's all these houses burned down. There's like, wait, why is that house still there? Why is that house there? And all the houses around it are burnt down like, what happened? That's what happened.

Chantel: Oh, yeah. I'm a firefighter that lives here, and I want to do all this pretty greenery, and I was allowed to have five trees. So I have three olive trees in the backyard, and I have two little shrubs in the front of the house, and that's it. Everything else is concrete. And at first I'm like, why are you doing this to me? He said, well, we live next to a park. Like, we need to have space. I'm like, okay. But now, right to your point, I can get insurance where most people in the neighborhood can't. I'm able to feel secure that they're going to come protect the house. But that's such a key point. Right. Because landscaping is so pretty. It's just doing it right for the environment that you live in.

Buddy Marshall: So I think Keith hit it right on the nose earlier when he said that folks don't care about insurance, don't like them until. Until it's too late. And you are, Keith, selling a peace of mind? If you can just get that through to our viewers here. Peace of mind. It goes a long way, you know?

Keith: Yeah. And if you think about it is like, why wouldn't you want to protect your biggest asset? What's the only thing that actually appreciates over time? Always your home land. Why wouldn't you protect that? I mean, put the time into it. It's worth it to me. It only makes sense. But like you said, I live and breathe this. This is something I look at every day. And to me, it's common sense, because I see what happens and what doesn't happen when certain things are done, like mitigating trees, bushes, rock, bark, and having your gutter guards and having them clean and having the roof done correct. Like, all those things make a huge difference. And it. Does it cost. Yes. But in the long run, it's.

Keith: It's going to be worth it because when your house is still sitting there and unfortunately your neighbor's houses aren't because they didn't do what they were supposed to do, you can go back in there and go to sleep and go to work, and the one less thing you have to worry about, so to speak.

Chantel: Yeah. To kind of go back, because I know you mentioned it, because you live in a pretty big hoa. I mean, he. He's in a pretty predominant HOA here in Sacramento. And what's interesting, like you said, is the HOA was encouraging you to. To plant more trees and shrubs and so forth. And so I think it's so important. From your perspective, like, we've got to educate those HOAs because they're looking at it differently than how they should be. And so from your perspective, when you move in and you said you walked the neighborhood and you kind of saw what the neighbors have and you're working with the HoA, what are the key things that you can educate? Like, you had to pick three things to tell them. What are the three most important things to educate the HOA managers?

Chantel: Because to your point, they need to understand it. They need to make sure. Because they don't want their community burning down, right? That's not their goal. Their goal is to take care and make that community safe.

Keith: Top three things I would say, and that I see is cut the trees back. I would say 10ft. They say five, but I'd go 10ft and make sure they're 10ft apart. I cut every single bush away from the house that's within five feet. And I would lay rock, if not concrete, around those planter boxes and things of that nature and push everything out. Those would be the three things I would do immediately.

Chantel: Well, you said no bark, right?

Keith: I would add gutter guards, especially if you have trees, so that the leaves and stuff do not get in the gutters. Even when you trim them away, it gets windy, they blow, you know, they still get there. So that would be, I guess, the four things I would do immediately.

Chantel: Well, you said something about bark, right? Replace the bark for rocks. And I think that's huge. Especially in California, we're all about conserving our water, not having more of a desert landscape. And you've noticed with a lot of new developments, they just throw bark down because I'm sure it's cheap and it's easy. And you're saying, get rid of that bark, right? Have the rocks come in.

Keith: I just did that for my house. We did it because it's pretty. Looks better, like, you know, and it was cheaper. So literally this last weekend, as I was out there taking the bark out and replaced it all with rock, my.

Chantel: Brain is, like, spinning right now. Because you've seen the front of my house. The builder put all bark. So I do have to switch that at some point. But to your point, that is just something that people. People do. It's invest the money now, I think is the big message, right? Don't defer your maintenance. Don't allocate funds to other areas. Allocate funds to protect not only your own personal property, but if you're in an apartment complex or a multifamily, you want to protect your residents, right? You don't want to displace all those residents. Where are they going to? Where are they going to go?

Keith: Not only that, like with apartment complexes and things of that nature, if you're putting rock down instead of bark, it's going to last longer. The bark disintegrates. Like even in two years, my bark started disappearing.

Buddy Marshall: My yard is all zero scape with river rock flowing. Looks like a dry creek bed. So yes, I, I'm, I'm there too.

Keith: It's two for one. Conserve water and wildfire. Two of the things makes a lot.

Chantel: Of sense, don't you babe?

Keith: Like we discussed a while back, another good thing about the firewise, so there's the bureaucracy of the government, of course, that is making a deal with insurance carriers where insurance carriers will insure 85% of wildfire areas. But they get to, like I said earlier, you know, write in whatever rate they can. But if you're a firewise community, they're going to target them first because they're safest. They've done, they mitigate it, they're less of a risk and they can write a little bit higher premium without having as much risk, I guess you can say. So it's a smart thing to do for the consumer and for the insurance carrier for once, like we all need to kind of work together so that over time if obviously these wildfires and claims and everything goes down, then hopefully our rates slowly start going back down again.

Keith: Because right now, like everywhere, I don't care where you live, it's pretty expensive.

Buddy Marshall: So Keith, outside of firewise, are there any new or upcoming California state regulations for homeowners that they should be aware of that may be coming up regarding defensible space or maybe fire mitigation?

Keith: There hasn't been anything new. It's like now they're just pushing what they've been saying for the last six or seven years a little bit harder and they're actually sticking to it. And they're like, well, if you don't have this, we're just going to non renew you. They're just finding reasons to get off of policies, I guess you can say that can cause a claim. People are not being responsible homeowners. Basically. It's like your tires are bald on your car. Go down to, you know, the tire center and go get some new tires. So yeah, your roof is old. Replace it. It costs money. That's, I mean Homeownership is homeownership.

Chantel: I want to go back to that, Keith, because I, I really like that. So in California, everybody's knows that if they're in a wildfire area, they had to go through the calf there program and people kind of, they just know it's going to be a heavy price tag. But you said something that I want to circle back at because I think this is super important for all of our viewers, whether you are a property owner or you own a multifamily unit. But you said that they're working with the insurance companies to actually have them write more policies. Now there can be different rates on the policies, but they aren't just fleeing California. There is that misconception of they're gone, you only have one option, which is the CalFare program.

Chantel: And so I think that would be really interesting to maybe dive into a little bit more because if people understood that, then when we're going to them and saying, hey, let us come and make sure you have the proper defensible space. Let us maintain your trees. Something we do here, we'll talk about here a little bit later, is our plant health care, tree health care and how we can make sure that the trees are safe and secure. So we'll kind of dive into that here in a minute. But could you talk to us a little bit about what the insurance carriers are doing and what that means? And because that's something that people don't know, I just thought everybody left and they're like, you're in the dust, figure it out. Right. That's kind of the thought out here.

Keith: Yeah. I'll try to explain this without confusing everybody because it gets a little tough. I'll try to simplify it, I guess. So you had State Farm that non renewed 75,000 homes. I'm going to use them as an example. So California Fair Plan insures all these people, but with the LA wildfire, they're out of money. So let's say that State Farm has 20% homeowners insurance in California. That 20% on, let's say 10 billion is $2 billion. So State Farm is on the hook for $2 billion because they're admitted in California. So if they get rid of their percentage in California. So if there's a big wildfire, then what happens is they don't have to pay that money. With this new rating, instead of paying 100% of the 20%, they would pay 50%.

Keith: So that 2 billion is now 1 billion and then on top of that, they have to write 85% of the wildfire areas to make up for that 50% of not 100. If that makes sense.

Buddy Marshall: Yes.

Keith: So this is what is happening with this whole situation and it's going to be good for everybody. I thought it was a pretty cool plan on both sides. When the insurance companies start coming in and this actually gets processed and goes through, I guarantee you that these carriers are going to go after firewise communities.

Chantel: Right. So to simplify it, Keith, for us is in order to get good insurance rates and not pay a lot, contact your tree company to make sure you have defensible space.

Buddy Marshall: That sounds like a plan to me.

Keith: You have to, I mean you have to have tree companies. You got to have the right roofs, you got to have the right landscape. Yeah, it's very important. I mean if you love the trees and the way they are, just take care of them and you can keep them.

Chantel: Well, that's the way. Right. Take care of your trees too. That's something that's so important. So you'll get a fun laugh, Keith, because you get our humor. So one of the big things we're pushing here at a is we're doing what we're calling tree healthcare. Thc. So we're going to give your tree a little bit of thc and basically what that means.

Keith: Did you say thc?

Chantel: So thc? Yeah.

Keith: Okay. All right.

Chantel: Yeah. Makes the tree feel happy, healthy.

Keith: It's not April anyway. Go ahead. My bad.

Chantel: I knew, I knew there'd be a giggle on that one. But no, the reality is what we're doing is just like you would with your pest company. Right. They come out every quarter and they spray for bugs. I have no idea what the heck they do, but I know that it keeps the bugs out of the house. Same concept for tree care. So we would go out and we would do whatever needs to be done for that tree to make sure that it's staying healthy, it's not dehydrated, it's not dying, protecting it from any type of insects or bugs that can destroy the tree. And then that way when there is a fire or a storm, your tree is going to be as healthy as possible. And so that's a big focus is the pre education.

Chantel: One of the reasons we brought up tree healthcare is we want to make sure that not only we talking about defensible space, we want to make sure the trees healthy. We want to make sure the tree, if there was a fire isn't going to catch on fire right away because it's dead. Or we want to make sure if there is a storm. We haven't talked a lot about that, but if there's a storm, that tree is not going to fall down on your house or your neighbor's house. I did stalk your website a little bit and you had an article right on your front page that said fallen tree care, who's to blame?

Chantel: And so I'd love if you could talk a little bit about that piece of it because I think it's really going to hit home for all of our viewers about the importance of not only maintaining your trees, but taking care of your trees and making sure that they're healthy and making sure that they're in an environment that they can flourish.

Keith: A lot of people don't understand trees. So tree is a non liability no matter what yard it's in. So let's say that you have a tree in your yard. It's unhealthy or, you know, big storm comes, blows it down and it hits your neighbor's house. So your neighbor's gonna be pissed. They're gonna be like, oh, this is your fault. And in reality is that their insurance has to cover it, not yours. So otherwise if you don't do anything, the tree is what the tree is, your insurance is going to cover for you for what it is. And another good thing about trees is like, with that, like, if it's unhealthy, obviously you got to get rid of it. Go plant a new one, do something.

Keith: If it's dying, you don't want it dry because if there is a fire, it's just going to be, it's just going to ignite. It's just going to help the wildfire, it's going to help the fire in general. And you're not helping yourself. So tree care is a big deal. It could be detrimental to your home.

Chantel: That's so crazy that you said if it falls on the neighbor's property, the neighbor has to have the insurance for it.

Keith: Yep.

Chantel: But you know, I think you said something. We do live in an area that we don't get a ton of rain. And so part of that tree health care that were talking about is that deep watering. Right. Making sure that tree is healthy. My assumption, I thought, oh, that tree looks dead next door because they didn't maintain their yard. If it falls on my house, cool, I can upgrade my bathroom and make it nicer.

Keith: I mean, you can. I mean, it's going to Happen, but it's gonna. It's gonna be. Your insurance rates are going up.

Chantel: Thank you. No, thank you.

Keith: You're gonna pay for it. Three to five years, like, extra money for no reason. You had nothing to do with it. So now that's when you start getting.

Chantel: Those neighbor battles flow that way. Please need to pay a higher premium. I am good. That, I mean, but these are. These are little things, Keith, that we just don't know. People don't know.

Buddy Marshall: All right, so, Keith, I have a couple of questions for you. The first question is, can homeowners request an inspection to review to demonstrate that they're making improvements for better coverage options? And also the second question is, how can they prove that they've taken risk reducing steps in negotiating their coverage? Or is there a negotiation process? It just isn't.

Keith: There's really not a negotiation. It's either they're going to stay on it if they're already on it, or they're going to drop you. So I guess to be able to prove, like, there's about four, well, maybe five big things that's happening right now. Number one year of your roof. If your roof is 20, 25 years old, they want you to have a new roof, or you have to have proof that the roof is still in good standing so that there will be no damage from the roof. Depending on when your house was built, your electrical, your sub panel, there are certain sub panels out there that they don't even accept. And they're like, get rid of the panel. Get a new one, or you're being dropped, period. No if, ands or buts. Plumbing.

Keith: Depending on how old your plumbing is, if it's 30 years old, if you have pecs or, you know, whatever the case may be in there. Fourth would be H Vac, which is that you have to have an updated furnace or AC unit outside. Can't be too old because these are all things that cause claims. And then if you're more in a wildfire area is having the clearance of the trees. Five. I say 10ft. They say five feet. They're. They're approving five feet right now. Five feet away from overhanging your house bushes. Five feet away from your house. Had clients cut the trees away, right? So they cut the branches away. It looks beautiful. Everything's good. And I notice all the leaves on the roof. And they're like sitting in the gutters. And I'm like, oh, this is not going to work. Watch.

Keith: So I send it in. They're like, yep, trees are good. But There's a bunch of clutter in the gutter. Not trying to rhyme. It just happened.

Chantel: That was good. So I was trying to hold a straight face for that one.

Keith: So I had to send that to the client. And then the client was like, are you kidding me? I'm like, no, it's. I mean, it could catch on fire. Like, why would you want your gutter full of leaves? Like, anyway, so they finally clean it out, I send the picture, and then they rescinded the non renewal. So what's happening right now is there's a lot of non renewals going out, which we touched on a little bit earlier. But it's a lot of roof and trees that's in distances away from the house with bushes.

Chantel: All I can think about because it made me laugh the whole time. But that's like our new marketing pitch. Don't clutter your gutter. Have your tree company trim your trees. So thank you for that, Keith. I mean, I think that's a great question that buddy asked and you hit on it right around space. I just moved and I don't have a lot of trees around my house. So I felt like I was fine. And mine was a little different. I tried to get a policy and they showed up for a full in house inspection.

Buddy Marshall: So.

Chantel: So they said, hey, yeah, so let.

Keith: Me interrupt you for one quick second. So if your house is valued over, some companies are 750,000, which is almost all of California. But if your house is over a million, they want to interior and they all do exterior, no matter what. But if you're over 750 with some companies but a million dollars, then yes, they're going to do an interior.

Chantel: So yeah, I'm glad you brought it up. But one of the things that was interesting is when they were walking the property, I got a letter and they said, hey, we're gonna non renew your insurance in three months. I said, why come on here? Like, I work for a tree company, right. I live with a firefighter and all concrete. Like my whole house is concrete in my roof, right? Like everything is just like very safe. And what they said to me, they said, yours is fine, but you live right next to a park. And so all of these beautiful oak trees, they're all close to your property. I said, well, what do you want me to do? Right? Like what am I supposed to do? It's the park.

Chantel: And I say that because I reached out to park and Rex and I said, hey, I need to come. I need to get these trees trimmed. Because I need to get insurance. And I said, you can't touch them. They're they're the city's trees. And we had to have a whole education with the city, right? So this is super important with the parks and recs and say, well, you do know that based on everything, like you're putting our property at risk because you're not maintaining your trees and so forth. And they basically said to me, if you want to do it, you pay for it. And so right, wrong or indifferent, I had to pay to make the parks trees look absolutely beautiful basically now every year to get insurance. And so it is something that is important for people to understand.

Chantel: It's not just about your neighbors, right. It's also about if you live next to a park, if you live next to a golf course, if you back up to wildland, right. Like clearance. People think that they don't have to clear that because it's not within their property lines, but you should, right? You don't want your house burning down. You don't want to not have insurance. And so now every time you come over, you can see the beautiful park trees are maintained by me. I'm happy that I'm contributing to the park.

Keith: That's awesome you're able to do that because like, whether if there's brush that's coming from a canyon or there's trees in a park or like you said, a golf course and you know, the homeowner will get more of a stance is like, well, I'm not paying for it. It's on your, you know, property, you need to maintain it. Then you fight with the city and yeah, good luck with that.

Chantel: Right? So I think that's so important. And then it's the. Every year, like you said, right. Annual maintenance, you and I both know they're going to come give me a letter in eight months and they're going to say, oh, sorry, the trees have grown back. You're going to get a non renewal. And I think that's kind of the last thing I really would love touch on is a lot of people get non renewals, right. I feel like that's just. You get a non renewal, you get one. It's, it's. You're going to get one at some point if you live in California. So for our viewers that are getting those, what's the next step they should do? Right? Who should they. Who should they contact and what should they do beforehand before they contact someone? Because a lot of people just freak out, right?

Chantel: They panic.

Keith: Yeah. I get calls from clients. They should contact their agent if they have an agent. There's the only thing that an agent can do is that they're your middleman, but they know what's happening so they can fix like all these other problems. For instance, I had a client that even the letter read strangely. It basically said, you're being non renewed. There was no fixing, there was nothing. You're just non renewed. And then the client calls me and I'm like, yeah, no, you just have to do this, this and that. I didn't read the letter because usually it says that you, if you fix this, we'll, you know, resend it. It didn't say that. And he brought it to my attention and I was like, oh, my goodness, you're right. But I guarantee you, if you do this, send me pictures that get lifted.

Keith: He sent me the pictures and it was rescinded the next day. And I was like, I told you. But if you have, if you don't have an agent, you're not going to know these things. So the first thing is like, if you get a good customer, csr, customer service rep from a company that you don't have an agent with, you can get lucky. But that's very slim. Having an agent, like I said, it doesn't cost you more money. You have somebody you can call instead of waiting online and you can get a live person. The key is to have an agent because they will be the ones that help you mitigate through, especially times like this.

Chantel: I've gotten one before in my other house and they sent me now that it was a drone, but I thought it was or maybe a Google image and it was my house. And then they circled every tree and they said, okay, these are in the way. I ended up calling just the insurance company at first and they're like, yeah, sorry, there's something we can do. And then at that point, right. Call the agent. Agent's like, no, you just need to trim the trees.

Keith: Yep.

Chantel: And this is before I worked at A plus. I didn't know that. I said, oh, is that it? And that's all I had to do, right? Cut back a couple little branches, make sure that it's very safe. I would always recommend for everybody listening right now, please make sure you don't do it yourself. Please make sure that if you ever are going to make any kind of adjustments to your trees or tree pruning maintenance, you consult an arborist. That's really important because the arborist Understands the weight of the trees and what the trees can support. I say that because I had a neighbor, he was out, he was probably, you know, I think in his 70s, and he was cutting down a branch with a saw. Like, what are you. What are you. What are you doing?

Chantel: And he's like, oh, you know, you got the insurance letter, too. I'm gonna just cut it down. And he cut it down. Well, the problem behind that is the next storm. And I wish I was kidding now that I'm thinking about this whole story. That tree actually fell and it broke the fence, like, line of his property. And he didn't know what to do. Right. And I'm sure he had to put an insurance claim to get it all fixed. So that's what I always say when you get these. It's not only about defensible space, but you. You've got to reach out to the people that are good at it. Right. The arborist knows what the tree can handle, and they'll give you a recommendation. Let's say this tree is healthy. We can cut it. This tree is not healthy. You have to remove it.

Chantel: And if you have to remove it and it is an oak tree, you can then say, okay, we've done everything to try to save that tree. Right. But we've determined that it's not safe. So I think that's huge because a lot of times people get letters and they just panic and they ignore it, and then they just don't have coverage. And you hear about that a lot. Well, they told us we're non renewal. We don't have coverage. What are we going to do?

Buddy Marshall: Well, there's also certain municipalities you need to get a permit.

Keith: Yeah.

Chantel: There's so much that you brought to the table, Keith, as far as just education that we don't know, and that's something that we are going to link at the end is not only your website, but if there's any articles or sites that you think are important for our viewers, please let us know. Because that's really important is we just want to educate because like you said, you live in this and breathe it every single day, but none of us do. So it's important.

Buddy Marshall: Well, Keith, thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate your time. You're taking time out and, you know, and thank your wife and family for allowing you to join us and tell them we didn't beat you up too bad.

Chantel: Keith, thank you so much. I really do appreciate it. You know, a lot of times within, you know, your industry. You guys don't get a lot of the voice in front of our viewers. And so I think it's fantastic to hear exactly what you do, which is you're just here to help, educate and make sure that all of your clients are doing what they can to be as safe as possible. Right? To protect themselves and protect their assets. And that was extremely helpful and I really appreciate it. So thank you for everybody listening. If you found this episode helpful, please share it with your neighbors, share it with your friends, share it with your HOA managers. Because at the end of the day, community preparation makes all the difference. And I think our tagline is make sure that we have a firewise safe community.

Chantel: And if we all did that, it's really going to go a long way. So really appreciate it. Thank you so much, Keith.

Keith: Yeah, thank you guys. This was fun. Love to help when I can. And education is everything. No matter how you look at whatever the case may be. If you're a little more educated, everything seems to work out a little bit better.

Chantel: Thank you for listening to this episode of Rooted in Care.

Buddy Marshall: We have a fresh lineup of new episodes ready to drop, so tune in each week to hear people just like you share their experience and insights on how tree care impacts our daily lives. Subscribe to Rooted in Care. We're on Spotify, Apple, wherever you get your podcasts.

Chantel: Tell us what you thought of this episode by leaving a review, commenting, or look us up on LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram, and tick Tock.

Buddy Marshall: This podcast is a plussed up production created in collaboration with Chorus Studios. Stay rooted out there.