House Owner Insurance Basics And The One Tip That Most People Neglect But Pay's Off Bigtime!
'House Insurance' is an insurance policy that combines insurance on your physical house as well as your contents within. If something were to happen, flood, fire, vandalism, theft etc. you the owner will get back everything including your house and its valuable contents that were damaged according to the restrictions of the policy. Of course we all hope and plan that we never have to implement a claim and some never do. Yet, being prepared should you ever have to file a claim will save you alot of time, money and frustration at the worst of times; when you need help from your insurance company. With most large insurance companies developing an online presence many people can now compare prices and get a home owner insurance quote via the internet with relative ease.
Every home owner insurance policy covers two basic important areas, that being the property with physical contents and liability or damages to self and others. If you the home owner are responsible for unintentionally injuring or damaging other's property then your policy will also protect you from paying for damages done to other people. If the insurance company determines that you were at fault than the chances of getting a claim are pretty slim abviously.
The main benefits of a home owner insurance policy are as follows:
1) In case of any damage done to the physical house the owner of the house insurance policy gets back the amount that has been damaged.
2) The legal responsibilities of the owner are compensated.
3) The temporary living expenses are also given in case the owner is forced to leave his home because of a severe damage to his house.
4) Policies will cover your losses whether you are physically at home or not during the incident.
5) The house insurance policy covers the damage done to the house due to different natural calamities such as hurricanes, tornadoes, flood and earthquake but most of the time they are excluded from the standard insurance policy. If you live in areas that frequent natural disasters many insurance companies will provide insurance like this for an additional fee.
6) A policy can also contain items that you take with you away from the property like laptops for example.
The One Tip That Every Home Owner Should Do:
I certainly hope you never have to file a claim, but just in case you do this is one tip that will save you hours and hour of frustration. There is one big problem that frequently occurs when someone has to file a claim. The insurance company wants to know what you had and how much it was worth. Well, that's all fine and dandy if they'll just take your word for it but most of them are going to want to see proof in the form of receipts. I'm sure most of you are following my thinking on this already. How do you produce the receipts if they have just been lost in a flood or fire? Or what if your not able to turn up the receipt because it got lost somehow. An insurance claim can get really sticky at this point because it becomes your word with no proof of your previous items. This has been a really big problem for insurance companies as well as home owners.
How technology has come to the rescue:
Most people either have a home video camera or know someone that does and if not can probly find a store that rents one. In an effort to make the insurance claiming process simpler most home owner insurance companies will recommend that you take a home video of every room of your house with contents and keep the video off site.
If you think about this it works really well - there are even home inventory companies now that do this full time and store the videos in a safe place for you. The insurance companies love this because now they can see firsthand what your trying to claim and it becomes way easier to determine the value of items when they can actually see the make and model simply through the video.
The benefits for you the home owner are huge as well and this has been known to really shorten a legetamite claim and will also guarantee that the price you get for your items is closer to what they are actually worth. The biggest benefit is you may find there are alot of items that show up in the video that you had forgotten about and therefore your total claim may end up being alot higher than simply be memory. It's recommended to update the video every so often as your contents change.
So let's recap: use the internet to get a home owner insurance quote to compare companies to ensure your not overpaying for your policy. Do a video inventory of your home with contents and keep the video off site or in another city if you can. It doesn't take long but may be well worth it to you at some point.
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