Will Your Home Insurance Protect Your Valuable Items?
Home insurance is designed to protect both your home and all of the contents in it. If your belongings are damaged due to a fire or stolen from a break-in, home insurance can help get back what was taken from you. That said, an insurance policy might not cover certain valuable items if there were stolen or destroyed. Make sure to follow these 3 tips to ensure you have enough coverage.
Check Your Policy
Many homeowners make the mistake of assuming that a standard homeowners insurance policy will cover everything when a loss occurs. That's why it is a good idea to read over your insurance policy or ask your agent about any potential limitations that would prevent valuable items from being covered.
Usually there are exclusions for items like artwork and jewelry. It's possible that there is a limit to how much an insurance provider will pay out, or you may need to buy an additional policy just for those items.
If you have not updated your home insurance policy since you bought 10 or 15 years ago, you may find that it is very outdated with how you live your life today. For example, it was common for home insurance policies to have a small amount of coverage for electronic items because they were not common in the house. What could have been fine back then is not nearly enough to provide coverage for your laptop and smart phone. Make sure that you still don't have those old limitations in place on an old policy.
Request a Personal Property Floater Policy
If you don't have the right amount of coverage for a specific item in your house, your insurance agent can help you get a personal property floater policy. This would be an additional policy that you pay for beyond your normal home insurance premiums, and will provide the coverage you need for a specific item in the event that it needs to be repaired or replaced.
Get Your Valuable Items Appraised
Anything that is considered high value will need to be appraised for the personal property floater policy. It is the only way for the insurance company to verify the actual value of the items that you are insuring, and so that they can determine a price for the policy based on their risks of potentially replacing the item.
When in doubt, you should contact services like United Counties Insurance Group. Let them know what you want covered and they'll help walk you through the process of getting the coverage you need.