Insuring Your Home

Homeowners insurance used to be called Fire Insurance. Now, your homeowner's policy covers a lot more than just losses resulting from fires. We often see claims for theft and burglaries, wind damage, damage from burst water pipesâ¦Your homeowner's even offers liability coverage if someone comes to your home and slips on your hardwood floors and decides to sue you for injuries. Overall, your homeowner's insurance policy offers very broad coverage.

But beware, the standard homeowner's policy does not offer coverage for some of Mother Nature's nasty surprises. For example, a steady rain causes a nearby drainage easement to overflow, flooding your basement. Your homeowner's policy does not offer coverage. What if there is an earth tremor (which is not that unusual in our part of the country) and your foundation is cracked - your standard homeowner's policy will not respond. Bottom line, know your policy's exclusions. There are quite a few. Our coverage checklists will help you.

Homeowner's coverage insures both the structure of your residence and your personal property, plus personal property not located in your home. Important, in insuring your home, make sure you have enough coverage to rebuild your home if it is destroyed. Regarding your possessions, keep in mind that your policy will put limits on certain types of property. For example, the standard homeowner's policy will limit jewelry coverage to 1,000. Bottom line, if you have significant amounts of jewelry, fine arts, computers, as well as any valuable collections, you need to consider special coverage for these items.

Take special care to make sure you buy homeowners insurance based on replacement cost coverage, as opposed to actual cash value. Under replacement value, the insurance will cover the cost of replacing property that is damaged, up to a maximum dollar limit. Actual cash value will cover the cost of replacing the property, minus depreciation. Actual cash value can take thousands of dollars away from your insurance settlement.

When it comes to shopping for the best price, we can help you by searching for the best fit between your needs and the different policies offered by various insurance companies. There are a number of cost saving strategies we can discuss: Avoiding duplicate insurance, deductible discounts, multiple policy discounts, new purchase discounts, new home discounts, safety device discountsâ¦the list goes on. Every insurance company offers a different set of insurance discount opportunities. As an independent agency, we are not tied to just one insurance company, and will shop the best plan for you. Over the last decade, we have insured over 2,000 homes in North Carolina. For more information on how our experience can work for you, just give us a call at 875-8889 or toll free 1-866-657-9865.