All homeowners insurance is the same, Right?

5 Coverage options to ensure you have on your policy!

Home Insurance Exclusions in Safford, AZHomeowners insurance is all the same, right? So, I should always buy on price, right? Wrong. It’s true that most stick-built homeowner’s insurance policies have a similar base. It’s called an HO3 policy form. It covers your house and other structures for everything, unless its excluded. It covers your personal property for a list of specific things that could happen and pays their actual cash value, it has liability, and medical payments. That’s about everything you need right? Well, not really. While the base policy is very similar from company to company most customers have higher expectations of how their insurance policy will respond. So here are 5 things most customers should consider purchasing to ensure your policy responds like you think and expect it will.

 

  1. Personal Replacement Cost – We don’t like leaving insurance companies with the ability to wiggle out of paying things they should. Personal property replacement cost does exactly that. Imagine your TV is 4 years old. It is damaged by a fire in the kitchen. Can you imagine the company coming in and saying your TV new cost $500, but its 4 years old so here’s $100 bucks, and we all hate insurance companies again. Adding Personal property replacement cost eliminates this possibility. You have a TV that cost $500 we will buy you a new TV of like kind and quality. Meaning we aren’t going to buy you a 70inch Sony if you had a 35 in Vizio. We will get you as close to what you had before. Personal property replacement cost awesome addition.

 

  1. Special Form on Personal Property – This is tricky, but remember I said on a basic HO policy your personal property, your stuff is insured for a list of things. Your house on the other hand is insured for everything unless its excluded. Question: Why would you insure the house differently from how you insure the couch inside the house… seems odd. Again, this is about meeting your expectations, and make sure your policy responds in the way you want it to.

 

  1. Extended or Increase replacement cost – When your house burns down, and you choose to rebuild you understand the idea of replacement cost. Before that it can be a fuzzy concept, so here goes my attempt to explain. You may have purchased your house for $200,000, but how much will it cost to rebuild? In times where the cost of things is going up (like now) it might cost you $225,000 to rebuild. Your agent may have even run a “cost estimator” to determine that it would cost $200,00 to rebuild the house when you bought it, but who pays for the additional $25,000? Extended or Increased replacement cost will if you have it. What this endorsement or change to the policy does is create a slush fund of a little extra cash in case it costs a little more to rebuild. There are some rules about this add on. So, don’t think you can underinsure the home to save money and be saved by extended replacement cost.

 

  1. Personal Injury – Did you know libel, slander, defamation, and cyber bullying are excluded on your insurance policy? Here’s a question for you have you ever said something bad about someone? What about on a social media site? What about your kids, have they? If so you have probably been guilty of defamation. These lawsuits can be hard to prove the social media has opened a whole new can of worms. Adding personal injury to your policy can ensure that you are prepared and covered for even the weirdest of lawsuits. I mean people are sensitive these days, but not you ; ).

 

  1. Water backup of sewers and drains – Gross. Yeah it is, and its typically not covered unless you add it to your policy. It can get expensive but $5,000 or $10,000 of this coverage can be worth every cent.

Just because you think it should be covered, doesn’t mean that it is. Be sure your policy will respond the way you think it will and start with these 5 coverage options.