A homeowners policy is for people who own their own home. This may be either a house or a condominium: Essentially, if you are making payments on the home with ownership as the end goal you will need homeowners insurance. This type of policy will cover both the outside of the home and all the contents of your home. It will cover the majority of natural disasters (certain disasters like earthquakes may be excluded but you may add extra coverage for that specific purpose) and will allow you to replace or rebuild damaged property. If your home is broken into by a thief and items are stolen your insurance will help replace stolen items and pay for any damage in terms of vandalism that the thief did.

With a renter’s policy, the coverage includes the inner contents of the home, apartment, or room that you are renting. This is coverage for the break-ins, the natural disasters, fires, and other circumstances that are beyond your control. Even though your landlord will have a homeowners policy on the place you are living, it does not cover your own personal items as a renter, which is why renters insurance is essential.

You may be very surprised to see the range of prices you’ll get in home insurance quotes. You can sometimes save hundreds of dollars, or even more, simply by choosing one company over another. However, it is important that you get quotes only from reliable top carriers. Your local independent agent is the best resource for this since they can accumulate multiple quotes from the top carriers for you online. Your independent agency will give you the power to compare all the best policy options conveniently at home!

Insurance is about the probabilities of a bad or catastrophic event occurring and the consequences if/when they do occur.

Home insurance policies are packaged differently by different insurance companies. As a homeowner, you want balance: cost of something bad happening and you paying for the repairs or making a claim vs. the cost of the insurance and the insurer raising your premium after making a claim.

To get the most value for your money,

• Consider the peculiarities of the area you live in e.g. is it a flood zone?
• Take a close look at your belongings, their worth and the real cost of replacement
• Inform your insurer if you make upgrades, buy new toys, jewelry, start a home-based business, etc. and confirm how they are affected by your current policy.

In general, you want to go through your homeowner’s insurance policy to see what’s covered and what’s not. Update your insurance if there are gaps. You can add “riders” or “endorsements” to a basic or standard policy to cover specific items or events.