I think your agent has either taken too hard a line or misunderstood the
circumstances of the house status.

1. It's not empty -- you've already said you've left some appliances in
it --
2. It's not unattended -- you have a real estate agent that is looking
after it in preparation for sale and you're still maintaining it -- keeping
the heat on and the utilities working, clearing the sidewalks, mowing the
lawn, caring for the garden, etc.
3. You haven't abandoned it -- you'll have to be in the house for final
clean-up, closing, etc. In fact, although you'll be travelling, you won't
completely move out of the house until you close the sale.

In other words, you haven't left the house unoccupied, it's just that at
some time in the future it will no longer be your primary residence -- it
will remain your primary residence until you actually close on a new house
in WA. Hopefully you will be able to sell this house quickly and move on.

In my case, I bought my new house before putting my old one up for sale. I
insured the new house with USAA, and stated that the new house was going to
be my primary residence. It took three months to sell the old house, and
during that time USAA provided insurance for both locations.

There are variations -- for example, many people have a vacation home or a
secondary home that may be unoccupied for months at a time.

If you're eligible you might check with USAA on how to handle this
question. Since they primarily cover military officers they are regularly
faced with questions of houses that will be vacant for extended periods of
time. You might also call your state insurance commissioner's office in
Columbus and ask them for advice. Regards --

wrote in message
ups.com...
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