California

Insurance companies are increasingly using aerial imagery in lieu of human inspectors to assess properties — and homeowners say they aren’t always getting it right.

From misinterpreted images to photos of the wrong home, California homeowners say they’re frustrated at the idea that planes and satellites could be used to decide whether they can keep their insurance. Insurance companies argue that it’s simply a modern and cost-efficient way of conducting home inspections.

Garry Herceg was puzzled when he got a notice that his home insurance would be canceled due to his property being littered with dying trees, dilapidated cars and a broken shed. Not because he disputed that those things existed, but because, he said, they were all on a nearby property, not his.

Herceg called his agent. Was it possible that his insurance company of 30 years had mistaken the home adjacent to his Monterey County property for his?

The problem, he learned, was that he and his neighbors on either side all share the same street address, differentiated by the letters A, B and C.

If inspectors had visited the property in person, they would have seen the three separate homes and separate mailboxes, Herceg said. When he chatted with an insurance agent who secured the policy for a different California home that he owns, that agent suggested that aerial images might be at fault.

Herceg’s insurer, CSAA, said in a statement that it makes use of “aerial imagery captured by third-party, fixed-wing aircraft and satellites,” along with other sources of information.

“Use of these images, which are carefully reviewed by our employees, enables accurate and efficient inspections, as well as a less-intrusive customer experience, and the images are provided to customers upon request,” a spokesperson wrote.

Herceg, though, said he was never shown photos of his supposedly rundown property. Instead, he said, his agent for the Monterey County property told him he needed to prove that CSAA’s finding was wrong.

One month and a faxed-over deed later, Herceg was informed that his insurance would not be canceled after all, he said. The whole experience left him feeling frustrated — and with no explanation of why his home had been singled out for the cancellation to begin with.

It’s not just CSAA: The vast majority of insurance companies use aerial imagery taken from satellites, aircraft or drones in some way, according to Piers Dormeyer, CEO of New York-based aerial imagery and data analytics firm EagleView.

Every day, EagleView flies airplanes across North America to collect information that informs insurers’ decisions about claims and whom to insure. The company does business with nine of the top 10 national insurers, Dormeyer said.

It saves insurers the cost and the potential liability of having human inspectors climb up on homeowners’ roofs, Dormeyer said. And the cost efficiency helps prevent fraud, he said — aerial imagery makes it easy for an insurer to repeatedly check on a home to make sure work it has paid for as part of a claim is actually getting done.

Aircraft collect images of properties from 4,000 to 10,000 feet in the air, Dormeyer said. But drones, which cost more to fly, are more commonly reserved for when homeowners make claims on their roofs and insurers want more detailed images of the damage, he said. In that case, he said, homeowners ought to get notice from their insurance company to make sure they know not to be alarmed when a drone visits their home.

Jean Willard learned that her insurer had taken aerial photos of her San Francisco home only when she got the photos in an email.

The images, dated Feb. 23, 2024, purported to show pooling water on her roof, a sign that insurers could take to mean that a roof is poorly maintained and water might be leaking into the home. Willard noted the date — it was just after a storm had swept through the Bay Area, drenching the city with nearly an inch of rain per hour.

So it was no surprise to her that her roof might still be slightly wet; she believed it was just a minor stain. But it did surprise her that the carrier she has been with for 30 years at various properties, the Liberty Mutual subsidiary Safeco, decided to non-renew her policy over it.

“I got all the discounts for being a great customer, and then boom,” she said. “It’s just angering, it’s painful.”

Willard knew a friend in the city who had successfully fought to keep a policy by showing the insurer that its images were wrong. So when Willard got the notice, she immediately called her roofer and had an inspection done, she said.

When the roofer’s report and new photos concluded that the water had dried and there were no problems with her roof drainage, she sent the report to Safeco. But the company told her that the puddles weren’t the only issue — the photos also showed algae or moss growing, another sign of potential water infiltration. Her roofer confirmed that a small patch of moss had been removed and was not large enough to pose a concern, but Willard was still dropped.

A Safeco spokesperson said in a statement that it could not comment on cases involving individual customers.

“It’s important to fully understand the condition of a property, and advances in satellite imagery are useful to identify issues that we — and homeowners — otherwise may not know exist,” the spokesperson wrote.

Though the timing may seem questionable, Dormeyer said it’s important for insurers to collect images right after large storms or other natural disasters. It allows the company to compare images from directly before and directly after the disaster — helping insurers determine which homes were damaged.

After wildfires, for example, EagleView sends aircraft to try to determine which areas were affected to understand insurers’ potential exposure, he said.

The use of aerial imagery doesn’t cancel out common sense, Dormeyer said. He encourages any homeowner who thinks that the insurer got it wrong to let the company know. In a statement, the CSAA spokesperson said the company always considers any photos or reports submitted by the homeowner in addition to photos taken by the company.

“These carriers aren’t looking for a reason to get rid of you as a customer,” Dormeyer said. “It’s important to understand that these tools are helping enhance the experience for homeowners by helping them get restored more effectively, and also reduce the cost of quoting, which should have a positive impact, not a negative one.”

Even though Herceg was able to get his policy back, the company never acknowledged whether it had photographed the wrong home, he said. Herceg said he was left feeling the process was backward.

“We were good customers, never missed a payment. But they’re so quick to jump to conclusions and not do due diligence and treat us that way,” he said.