Protect what matters most with a home insurance policy you can tailor to your life.
Homeowners insurance is there to help you ease the financial burden of repairing or rebuilding your home and replacing your belongings after commonplace disasters — a fire, lightning strike, tornado or even a break-in. It also can help cover your costs in a lawsuit over an injury — if, say, your dog bites a guest or your tree damages your neighbor’s car.
What does homeowners insurance cover?
A standard homeowners insurance policy covers damage to your home and your property caused by various perils covered by the policy. Typical home insurance policies cover damage caused by:
- An aircraft, car or other vehicle
- Explosions
- Falling objects
- Fire and smoke
- Lightning strikes
- Theft
- Vandalism and malicious mischief
- Some types of water damage
- The weight of ice, snow and sleet
- Windstorms and hail
What are the types of homeowners insurance?
In most states, standard homeowners insurance policies provide four main types of coverage.
- Dwelling — Pays for damage or destruction to your house and any unattached structures and buildings, such as fences, detached garages, and storage sheds.
- Personal Property — Covers the contents of your house, including furniture, clothing and appliances, if they are stolen, damaged, or destroyed.
- Liability — Protects you against financial loss if you are sued and found legally responsible for someone else’s injury or property damage.
- Loss of Use — Pays for additional living expenses if your home is too damaged to live in during repairs. Most standard home insurance coverage pays 10 to 20 percent of the amount of your dwelling coverage.
What coverage is required or suggested in my state?
Home insurance is not required by law, but if you have a mortgage, your lender can require you to have insurance until the loan is paid off.
And there are other reasons to insure your home. If your home is damaged or destroyed in a disaster (think: tornado, kitchen fire, hailstorm), insurance can help you pay to repair or replace your home and belongings. Liability coverage in a homeowners policy also helps you protect your personal assets from costly lawsuits if you are sued and found responsible for damage or injury to others.
You also can purchase the following optional home insurance coverages:
- Guaranteed Replacement Cost — Provides the most complete coverage for your home. Your home insurance company requires you to meet specific underwriting rules and conditions to qualify for this coverage. For instance, you may need to increase your home insurance amount on a monthly, quarterly or yearly basis to keep up with the inflation rate.
- Scheduled Personal Property Endorsement — Also called a personal article floater. With this coverage, possessions, including jewelry, furs, stamps, coins, guns, computers, antiques, etc., are covered. Each article is itemized and detailed in the floater, and excluded perils also are outlined. Personal article floaters often do not have deductibles.
- Increased Limits on Money and Securities — Increases coverage amounts for money, bank notes, securities, deeds and more.
- Secondary Residence Premises Endorsement — Covers a secondary residence, such as a summer home. Insurance for secondary homes is not automatically provided by the home insurance policy you have for your primary or principal residence, so it’s important to consider this endorsement if you own more than one home.
- Watercraft Endorsement — Expands personal liability and medical payments coverage for small sailboats and outboard motor boats only.
- Theft Coverage Protection Endorsement — If items from your motor vehicle, trailer or watercraft are stolen, theft coverage protection broadens theft coverage without requiring proof of forcible entry.
- Credit Card Forgery and Depositors Forgery Coverage Endorsement — Coverage applies if your credit cards are lost, stolen or used without permission, or if someone forges a check, draft, promissory note, etc. Certain restrictions apply and are noted in your home insurance policy.
How much homeowners insurance do I need?
One way to estimate how much home insurance you might need: multiply the total square footage of your home by per-square-foot building costs in your area. (A local real estate agent, contractor or builders’ association should be able to give you a ballpark amount of local building costs.)
In addition to estimating the cost to rebuild your home, consider how much it will cost to:
- Replace your belongings
- Defray additional living expenses if you can’t live in your home
- Protect your financial assets if you are sued
How The Wingerd Insurance Agency can help.
Selecting the right ‘Coverage A’ amount is your responsibility. Sound like a big obligation? Luckily, The Wingerd Insurance Agency is here to help. The companies we represent use industry leading underwriting tools to estimate what it would cost – including materials and labor – to rebuild your home from the ground up. Like any estimation this will not perfectly capture every specific building item in your home. You should use it as a starting point and add to it depending on your home’s specific features.
Follow these simple steps to help ensure your home is insured to full value.
- Provide detailed information at time of purchase to be sure that you receive a thorough and accurate quote.
- Ask us about additional coverage options that may be available.
- Review your insurance to value calculation on a regular basis with us.
- Report any changes or improvements that you make to your home to us so that you can re-evaluate your coverage needs.
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