Your home is likely your biggest investment. Having the proper insurance coverage is a must to ensure your financial stability in the future. Here are five ways to tell if you have the proper amount of insurance on your home.
Get an Appraisal Done
It’s not uncommon for the value of your home to increase over the years. With new developments and upgrades in your area, you may find that your home is worth well over what you have it insured for. Do yourself a favor and have a professional property appraiser come out to your home to do a report. You may even want to hire a couple of different appraisers. Their appraisal documents will show you what the perceived value of your home is. This will allow you to compare your current insurance coverage amount to see if you need to upgrade your policy.
Look at Online Real Estate Sites
One quick way to determine if your insurance coverage is within the same ballpark as the value of your home is to check online real estate sites. While your home isn’t listed, you can still determine what the value is based on the value tool on most real estate websites. Some common examples include Zillow, Trulia, and Realtor. Look at all three real estate sites and determine what the average value is for your home. Compare this to your current coverage and you’ll know whether you’re in the right range or not.
Ask A Real Estate Agent
Real Estate agents tend to have access to company software that works to determine the sale price of a home. This helps them to get the right listing price for their clients. If you have a real estate agent that you commonly work with, simply ask them to look up the value of your home. This can be super simple to do and provide you with very accurate results.
Ask Your Insurance Company
Most insurance providers have a personal property appraiser that they deal with regularly. You can ask your insurance company to provide an assessment of the value of your home. This will help to ensure that you get the proper amount of coverage for your home. This will likely be provided for a fee. You’ll have to ask what the fee is for the individual insurance company that you go through.
Regularly Update Your Valuables List
Many insurance policies will cover your home and personal property up to a set amount. While you may have started your policy with a lower amount because you didn’t have a lot of personal property at the time, that could easily change. If you recently upgraded your driveway, porch, or even lawnmower, you’re going to need to update your coverage limit to ensure that you’re covered if tragedy happens.
When it comes to protecting your home, you want to ensure that you’ll be financially okay if tragedy does strike. The above five tips will help you to ensure that you have the right coverage limit on your insurance policy. Remember that your coverage should be updated regularly as you alter your home and valuables.
