subject: Homeowner Insurance Do You Have The Wrong Amount? [print this page] House owner coverage is an important component of any good financial plan. Since our homes are probably our biggest assets, protecting ourselves by having the right amount of coverage is important. However, most of us are using the wrong method to calculate our need for house owners coverage.
Not only are most of us unaware of the correct way to determine the amount of home owners coverage we need, few of us have recalculated our need since we purchased our home. If you have owned your home for any length of time, you probably have the wrong amount of insurance protection. Inflation can make a bug difference.
A policy with the wrong amount of coverage always hurts. It can have a huge impact should we get less from our insurance carrier after we file a claim. It can hurt us every month when we pay for our policies.
One wrong way to determine the amount of coverage you need is to use the amount that you paid for your home. Why is this wrong? One reason it is wrong is because the price you paid for your house includes the land itself. The land isn't likely to burn down. It not insured by your homeowner's policy.
Another incorrect way to determine the amount of homeowner's insurance coverage you need is to base the amount on comparable sales of houses in your neighborhood. This is probably the wrong amount. Homeowner insurance protection isn't designed to pay for a new home for you.
These methods of determining the amount to insure your home for make sense even though they are incorrect. However, your homeowners insurance policy will not buy you a new house if yours burns down. It will rebuild your home on your land if it is destroyed by a covered peril.
The price of nails, sheet rock, and skilled labor in your area affect the cost of rebuilding your house. The cost of buying a similar house is not directly correlated with the amount of insurance protection you should have on your home.
This means that the cost of other houses in your area is almost entirely irrelevant. The selling price of the other houses includes the value of your land. It also includes the value associated with the benefits of living in your vicinity.
The quality of schools in your area probably impacts your home's market value. The cost of rebuilding your house will not be impacted by how good the public schools are or how close you are to your city's amenities.
Your home owners insurance protection company should be able to suggest a method for properly computing the replacement cost of your house. They may have a formula that uses the square footage of your rooms and other factors.
Any figure you come up with after doing the calculations will be wrong after a year or so due to inflation or deflation. Be sure to recalculate on a regular basis.
Having the wrong amount of coverage can mean that you either pay too much for your policy or are paid too little if your house is destroyed by a covered peril. Be sure to value your home the right way.
by: Alston Balkcom
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