Best Homeowners Insurance

The best homeowners insurance is an insurance policy protecting your investment in your home from damage that would diminish its value below the amount you paid for it. There are four basic kinds of homeowners insurance.

One category protests the structure of the house, a second protects your personal assets, and the third protects you against liabilities like throwing a baseball from your lawn through your neighbor’s window and breaking his priceless Tiffany lamp and insurance protection from off-premises fees like the cost of staying in a hotel if your house burns down after being struck by lightning.

The best homeowners insurance is an option called extended-replacement value coverage, and it will replace your home and contents that were in it 100%. If you drive and own a car, the next option you want to seek is a reduced cost policy if you purchase your auto insurance and your home insurance from the same insurance company.

With extended-replacement policies, an additional percentage is added in the event that your house would have to be completely re-built, to defray the rising labor and building materials costs.

This also means that you want to insure that your policy is always updated prior to renewal, so that all improvements made to the home are accounted for and tallied into the current replacement cost value.

Home owners also want to maintain an updated inventory list of personal assets. These items are all your household goods which are non-structural. You want to maintain the valuation list of your personal effects, and what it would cost to replace all of the items.

If you have a video camera, it is a good idea to make a video of everything you own. Just start in one room and video the contents in it, and then proceed room to room throughout your home and storage areas until you have a recorded image of every item in your household. Then, it would be a good idea to make a new video in a year from now.

You wouldn’t want to miss items like keeping grandma’s diamond ring that has been appraised for $25,000.00.

Bear in mind the cost to replace many items may be more than what you paid for them originally because of the inflation factor. Also most people would way underestimate the value of their household items, if they didn’t have a list. People tend to forget about items like a radial arm saw in the garage that they don’t use every day.

Additionally, several insurance companies like to reimburse their customers once they bring forward receipts. How many receipts does the average home owner save? And, if they weren’t locked in a safe, would they survive a fire or a flood?

That is an issue you want to consider when deciding the best homeowners insurance.

Reputation for paying claims is also an important issue when seeking the best homeowners insurance. For instance, there were insurance companies who refused to pay their clients following Hurricane Katrina devastating New Orleans.

So do your research, and pick wisely my friend.