Thanks for the helpful replies. House is in Ohio, will be totally
empty, save some appliances. Unfortunately I can't even check on it,
since we're moving to WA state. I have one rather knuckle-headed
neighbor who's marginally reliable, I'm going to ask him to keep an eye
open, but who knows? I'll check out the netquote.com site, also I
think I'll try calling Farmer's directly; although I've used this agent
for about 20 years for house & car insurance, he could be mistaken, or
as someone suggested on another forum, doesn't want to bother
re-writing the policy if he doesn't get anything out of it. That would
be too bad, but not a huge shock. BTW the house is paid for, so a
mortgage is not an issue. This situation must come up literally
millions of times a year in the US, I can't imagine there's no way of
accommodating it. Needless to say, I'd like to see the place sell
about an hour after I vacate, but that's not terribly likely...

Rick