What actually happens after you answer the questionnaire.

One questionnaire, asked once

Every market that might insure your home wants the same facts. That includes the address, the year built, the roof's age and material, the updates to plumbing and electrical, and the claims history. casa asks for them once. That one set of answers is what every market in the search gets rated against.

That is the quiet difference between a search and a scavenger hunt. The usual way to shop a hard-to-place home is to retype the same details into site after site.

Or you repeat them to each agent who calls. Then you hope the versions stay consistent.

Here the questionnaire is the whole ask. Everything after it is the search doing its work.

Standard insurers first, then the specialty insurers

The search leads with standard insurers, and that order is for your benefit. A standard insurer files its prices with the state, its customers are backed by California's state guaranty fund, and its price is usually lower. If one of them will take your home, that is the answer you want, and the search is built to surface it.

The specialty insurers are rated in the same pass, not saved for later. This is the part of the market built for the homes standard insurers turn down, and it now insures more than 300,000 California homes. Most homeowners have never had it searched at all, because most sites cannot reach it.

Both sides of the market run off the same answers, in one search. You do not start over when one side says no, because the other side was asked in the same pass.

Quotes, or a straight answer

What comes back is delivered to you. When markets return quotes, you see actual quotes for your home, not teaser averages or a promise that someone will call with the price. When they do not, you get a straight answer about what is possible, and a next step rather than a dead end.

A quote is more than its bottom line, so each one shows you what you would actually be agreeing to. These are the numbers worth comparing carefully.

• The yearly price for your home, based on the insurer's own rating of your answers.
• The rebuild coverage amount, which should track what it would actually cost to rebuild your home.
• The deductible (the part of a claim you'd pay yourself), including any separate deductible that applies to specific risks.
• For specialty insurance options, the taxes and fees, itemized as line items rather than folded into the price.

When your home needs a human

Some homes cannot be quoted online, and the honest version of a search says so instead of pretending. An insurer may want someone to look closer. The home may be unusual in a way a rating system cannot price. Or the answers that came back may need judgment to read.

When that happens, a licensed agent reviews your home personally. Not a call center, and not a list of strangers who bought your number. One licensed person looks at your actual request, and contacts you about it. Whatever they find, you get the same thing the search promises everywhere else, a real answer about what is possible.

The names, the ratings, and the paperwork

Every quote in the search comes from a real insurance market, and you can see who it is. Ask any time, before anything is final. You get the insurer's name and its financial strength rating, the independent grade of its ability to pay claims. On a specialty policy, where the insurer may be one you have not heard of, that rating is exactly the thing worth looking at.

There is real paperwork behind a specialty policy, and we handle all of it for you. Anything that needs your signature is short and plainly worded, put in front of you before you commit to anything. There is always someone to ask if a line is unclear.

That is the whole thing: one questionnaire, one search across both sides of the market, quotes or a straight answer. Licensed people stand behind the parts that need a person. The rest is your decision, made with the whole picture in front of you.