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First Time Home Buyer?
Here's What You Need to Know About Home Insurance
Buying your first home is a big event in your life! Finding the right home insurance to protect your investment often brings many questions. We're here to help you navigate home insurance and ensure that you have the right coverage to protect you, your family, and your home.
What is Home Insurance and Why Do I Need It?
Home Insurance is a necessity for a number of reasons. First, lenders usually require you to show proof of insurance before they hand you the keys, so you won't get very far without it. Second, home insurance generally covers damage to your home's interior and exterior, the loss or theft of possessions, and personal liability for harm to others. There are three main levels of home insurance that you should know about, and then we'll talk about the details a little later.
1. Actual Cash Value
The amount of money needed to fix your home, minus the decrease in value of your property because of age or use.
2. Replacement Cost
This covers the amount of money it would take to replace your current home — if damaged or destroyed — with the exact same home or a similar home in today's market.
3. Extended Replacement Cost
Extended replacement cost is an expansion of your current dwelling coverage that helps cover extra rebuilding costs that are outside of your control.
What Information Do I Need to Purchase Home Insurance?
When you're getting ready to purchase home insurance, you'll need to have some information handy. Your Preferred Insurance Opportunities agent will be able to help you with the details, but here are some things that you'll need to get started.
1. Identifying Information
This one is pretty easy, but in order to write your policy we need to know who you are! Have information like your birthday, social security number, and new address handy.
2. Current Condition of Your New Home
To determine the right amount of coverage for you, we'll need to know some of the basic details about your potential home. Things like the age of the structure and the condition of the exterior and interior can affect the cost of your coverage and also help us recommend which coverage types might be best for you.
3. Recent Renovations & Repairs
Recent renovations, additions, and repairs can also affect your insurance. Renovations and additions could increase your home's value, which could mean you need additional coverage. Other renovations, such as green initiatives, can offer discounts on your home insurance, so it's important to know what improvements have been made.
What Coverage Options Exist and Which Are Right For Me?
We already know about the three main types of home insurance coverage, but there are a few other coverage options to be aware of to ensure complete protection of your home and your stuff. Remember, your Preferred Insurance Opportunities agent will help identify the right types of coverage for you!
Detached Structures
Also called Coverage B - is part of your homeowner's policy that protects structures on your property not physically connected to your home, such as a detached garage, storage shed, or gazebo.
Home Cyber Coverage
Protects individuals and families from losses such as compromised data on personal computers, mobile devices and other connected home technology, as well as damage to software and operating systems.
Buried Line Service
Service line coverage, also known as buried utility lines coverage, is an endorsement that can be added to many home insurance policies to cover the cost of repairing or replacing a broken utility line running into your home.
Flood Insurance
You may be surprised to learn that your property insurance doesn’t cover flood damage. That’s because flood insurance policies are generally purchased separately through government programs.
Water/Sewer Backup
A standard water or sewer backup coverage endorsement reimburses you for water damage to the structure of your home or personal property if it’s discharged or overflows
Scheduled Personal Property
This supplemental insurance policy extends coverage beyond the standard protection provided in a policy. This can help ensure full coverage of expensive items, such as jewelry, guns, or artwork.
Equipment Breakdown
This optional provides coverage for physical loss or damage to equipment caused by mechanical, electrical or electronic breakdown, rupture, bursting, bulging, implosion or explosion.
Identity Theft Protection
identity theft coverage helps you pay for all the services you’ll need to get your identity back and fix your credit score, which can be an overwhelming and expensive process to do on your own. It may also cover preventative services, like credit or digital footprint monitoring
How Can I Save Money On My Home Insurance?
Not only can we get you the right home insurance coverage, but we'll get you the right price too. There are many ways that you can save on your insurance costs. You can bundle multiple policies together, make meaningful home improvements, maintain good credit, and many more. Here are some of our favorite ways!
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