Are you getting the maximum amount of coverage out of your homeowner's insurance? Purchasing optional coverage from your insurance company can save you from paying for expensive water damage repairs, make it easier to replace your furniture and even save your home if a guest is injured on your property. Although you'll pay more for additional coverage, it's worth it to give you peace of mind and prevent sudden expenses that can be financially ruinous. Here are three additional homeowner's insurance coverage options you should think about adding to your policy to fully protect your home.
1. Umbrella Coverage for Personal Liability
Many homeowners are unfamiliar with umbrella coverage and don't understand its purpose. While all homeowner's insurance has personal liability coverage, you can purchase umbrella coverage to raise your personal liability limit.
Personal liability is responsible for covering you when guests sue you for injuries that they sustain on your property. If a guest is very seriously injured and you are found at fault because your property was unsafe, you'll have to pay that guest's medical bills. For very serious injuries, the judgment against you can easily exceed the normal amount of personal liability coverage on your homeowner's insurance policy.
That's where umbrella insurance comes in — it raises the amount that the insurance company will pay out to cover judgments against you. This keeps your home safe since courts can seize your property and sell it to help pay judgments. Umbrella coverage is very inexpensive and worth adding to your homeowner's insurance for the peace of mind that it offers.
2. Full Replacement Policy for Your Home's Contents
When you purchase homeowner's insurance, you'll have to make a decision about what level of coverage you want for the contents of your home. You'll have to choose between actual cash value coverage or full replacement coverage. If you opt for actual cash value, an insurance company will pay only what your items would be worth if you sold them — this factors depreciation of your property into the insurance payout. In other words, you'll get less money from the insurance company than you paid for your items. With a full replacement policy, your insurance company pays you enough money to replace the damaged or stolen items with identical versions.
It's worth paying an extra amount of money in homeowner's insurance premiums to have your items fully covered by a replacement policy. While most people correctly think of electronics as something that depreciates quickly, furniture and mattresses also experience significant depreciation over the years. If you have an actual cash value policy and experience damage that destroys much of your furniture, you're likely to have difficulty replacing it all on the amount that the insurance company pays out. Opting for full replacement coverage makes it easier to return your home to normal after it experiences significant damage.
3. Backup Water Coverage
Sometimes called burst pipe coverage or groundwater coverage, this type of coverage protects you from water damage not caused by flooding. Flood insurance will only cover you from water damage caused by storms. You need backup water coverage to pay for water damage repairs if a pipe bursts in your home or if the municipal sewer system backs up or floods. Since water damage is often extremely expensive to fix, adding this type of coverage to your policy can save you from very high contractor bills.
While adding optional coverage to your homeowner's insurance policy will cause you to pay extra for your premiums, the added coverage is often worth it. Contact your homeowner's insurance agent to see what additional coverage options they offer and how much they cost. Some types of additional coverage, such as umbrella coverage, are pleasantly inexpensive due to the rarity of how often they are needed — but if you ever do need it, you'll be glad you added it to your home insurance.
For more information, check out a website like https://www.windfallinsurance.com.
Share22 April 2018
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