Types of Home Insurance Policies
Congratulations! You’re finally a homeowner. Now it’s time to protect yourself, and what will probably be one of the biggest investments you make during your lifetime, with the right home insurance coverage.
Of course, with all the different types of home insurance on the market, you might be feeling a bit overwhelmed. Rest assured that although you have several homeowners’ insurance protections, they fall into relatively neat and understandable categories.
- Basic Home Coverage: This type of policy protects you from the most frequently seen damages, such as fire, smoke, lightning, vandalism, theft, etc. Because of the basic nature of this coverage type, you will want to name any personal belongings you want to have covered, understanding that many will not be applicable.
- Broad Home Coverage: People tend to choose broad home insurance coverage over basic home coverage for good reason: It includes plenty of damages and disasters that the basic coverage policy doesn’t, such as falling objects, freezing HVAC systems and more. Plus, it tends to cover personal belongings and may even cover personal liability. This means if you incur damage to your furniture, apparel or jewelry, you’ll be able to receive reimbursement for replacements or the cash value of what your personal items were worth at the time they were damaged or stolen.
- Special and Comprehensive Form Coverage: The most common forms of homeowners’ insurance policy, the special and comprehensive forms, cover everything in the broad home coverage and much more. They aren’t just limited to your home — they’re flexible enough to expand coverage to other structures on your property. These can include decks and garages, which may become damaged due to manmade or natural causes.
Of course, these are wide-ranging categories. Your particular situation will determine which is best suited to your needs. Plus, don’t forget that there are other, less common, types of homeowners’ insurance, such as for mobile home ownership, condominium ownership and even older home ownership.
As you sit down with your independent insurance agent to talk about all the opportunities you have, be thorough and patient. Making a home insurance policy decision is essential and shouldn’t be taken lightly.
Adding to Your Homeowners’ Insurance Coverage
Perhaps your homeowners’ insurance coverage isn’t quite what you want. You’ll find that you have plenty of choices to tweak it to make sure it meets your specifications.
Want to add flood damage, water damage, mold, war, smog, animal damage or earthquake damage protection to your home insurance policy? It’s possible if you’re willing to increase how much you pay per month or year.
Talk to an independent insurance agent about a rider to your homeowners’ policy that governs the disaster(s) that concern you, such as flooding or sewage back-up. Chances are good that no matter what type of home insurance coverage carrier you choose, you’ll be able to find a home insurance policy type that gets you closer to where you want to be: protected for life.