What You Need to Know About Homeowners Insurance

Of course, homeowner’s insurance is not a luxury item in the United States. However, although the law does not require homeowner’s insurance, every mortgage company or bank offering mortgages does. Consequently, if you want to purchase a house, you need to have homeowner’s insurance.

What does Homeowners Insurance Cover?

State agencies regulate insurance companies. However, there are no state requirements for specific types of coverage in a homeowner’s policy. Nevertheless, there are certain types of coverage that appear in standard homeowner’s insurance policies:

Your Home and Its Contents

Homeowner’s insurance provides dwelling coverage to the interior and exterior of your home. Furthermore, homeowner’s insurance also covers the contents of your home. Personal property, such as clothing, furniture, appliances and jewelry are all covered.
However, there are limits to how much the insurance company will pay for certain items. For example, the insurance policy may have limits regarding jewelry, artwork, antiques, etc. Consequently, if you have expensive jewelry, artwork, silverware, etc., you have coverage options to purchase additional insurance for those items.

Personal Liability Coverage

Your homeowner’s insurance covers losses relating to personal injury lawsuits.
For instance, someone could trip and fall on your sidewalk and sue you. In that event, your homeowner’s coverage kicks in. Therefore, your insurance company will hire a lawyer to defend you. In addition, the insurance company will pay any settlement or jury award (up to the policy limits).

Additional Living Expenses

The damage to your house could force you to leave while your house while it is being repaired or rebuilt. So your homeowner’s insurance will pay for hotels, restaurant meals, etc. However, these additional living expenses will have policy limits.

What Types of Homeowner’s Insurance Coverages Are Available?

Generally, there are three types of homeowner’s insurance coverage companies offer:

Actual Cash Value

Under this insurance, the company will pay you the current value of the damaged property. In other words, the company will pay the purchase price minus depreciation.

Replacement Cost

For this coverage, the insurance company pays the full price for like items to replace, repair or rebuild the damaged property.

Guaranteed or Extended Replacement Value

This property insurance coverage will pay for your house to be rebuilt, as it was, no matter the cost. Therefore, this coverage assumes it will cost more to completely rebuild the home as it existed before the covered event.

What Events are Not Covered by Homeowners Insurance?

There are some natural events that homeowner’s insurance does not cover. For instance, it does not cover flooding and earthquakes events. If you live in an area prone to flooding, you may have to purchase flood insurance.

How Should You Select a Homeowners Insurance Company?

First, use a local agent who works with several insurance carriers. For this reason, that agent can get quotes from different companies for you to compare. She will be available to answer insurance questions. She can get you homeowner’s insurance quotes from different home insurance companies.

You can also get a home insurance quote online.

Then go to your state’s Department of Insurance website. It will have information on ratings and the number of complaints the companies receive. Additionally, look up the companies’ retention rate. That is to say, the percentage of policyholders who renew their policies every year.

Go online and look for policyholder reviews. That can tell you how responsive they are to their policyholders. In addition, you can get information on how quickly (or not) they resolve claims of policyholders.

How Do Homeowners Insurance Companies Set Their Rates?

There are several things carriers look at when setting rates for a particular homeowner.

First, the carrier will see how many prior property damage claims the homeowner has filed. Next, the carrier will even look at prior claims filed by previous residents of the property in question. For example, have there been multiple claims for roof damage because of high wind? Alternatively, was there more than one water damage claim filed for this property?

How Can You Lower Your Homeowners Insurance Rate?

If You Have Questions About Your Homeowners Insurance, Call AllCity Adjusting

We are a family-owned claims company with five decades of combined adjusting experience. As a result, if there’s one thing we understand, it’s that you need 100% of your claim value.

Insurance companies undervalue your claim 8 out of 10 times. Moreover, they hire expensive adjusters to ensure they maintain a strong profit margin.

In addition, they have experienced actuaries that create insurance agency guidelines that help their team of agents to challenge your insurance claim’s validity. You have already gone through a tumultuous event. For this reason, get an agency that gets you more.

At AllCity Adjusting we work to ensure you get 100% of your claim value. Equally important, with over 50 years of combined adjusting experience, we know insurance companies and understand where they cut corners. Moreover, we help you build a larger claim, maximize your claim value, and get you back to normal fast. Don’t get fooled, get the company that gets you more.