Home Insurance - Homeowners Insurance

No matter if you’re renting a property or own your own home, one of the most important things you can have is home insurance. Not only does this give you peace of mind that you won’t have any huge replacement costs should something happen to your home, but it can also protect items you take outside your home.

Since home insurance covers both the contents of your home and your home itself, it’s one of the best additions to your home that you can ever have, yet studies have shown that almost 40% of homes are under-insured, so make sure that you’re not one of them.

What Home Insurance Covers
Although you can get a buildings-only type of cover, the majority of home insurance policies include both home and contents (although for tenants, contents-only is usually the case, since the landlord should insure the building). This is definitely the best way to go for your home insurance, since although it may be slightly more expansive to have, the amount it can save you will more than make up for any extra monthly or annual cost.

For example, say there is a particularly bad storm in your area, and your house suffers extensive damage – you can imagine the cost to replace a wall, or the tiles on your roof, or any other structural kind of damage.

Earthquakes are another increasingly frequent hazard in the United States, and again this is where your home insurance cover can be so important. If any part of your property suffers structural damage, your insurance company will pay for the repairs.

The same goes for any household items that are damaged as a result of an earthquake – any dishes, glass, picture frames, furniture, etc, all of these and more will either be repaired or replaced by the company you have your home insurance with. An additional benefit is that it will usually be on a new-for-old policy, so any appliance that are damaged will be replaced with the latest model.

Additional Cover
Another reason why home insurance is so important to have is the additional cover it offers, should you ever be in the unfortunate situation of having to make a major claim. This is particularly true if your home is in need of any extensive repairs due to storm or any other kind of damage.

If your home is made uninhabitable when any repairs are being carried out, your home insurance policy will cover the cost of any hotel expenses, meals, or any other normal living costs that you would have to otherwise foot yourself. Although friends and family may offer to take you in, space would obviously be at a premium, whereas at least in a hotel you would retain some sort of privacy.

Although you may feel that your home is relatively safe, and that you have adequate security measures in place to protect your possessions, nothing can offer you protection against storms or other similar causes of damage. This is just one of the reasons that home insurance is something to be taken seriously.