Standard homeowners policies cap jewelry claims at $1,000 to $2,500 — even if you have hundreds of thousands in personal property coverage. Here is what the sub-limit means and how a scheduled floater fixes it.
Mold is one of those home repair problems that starts small and turns expensive fast. A slow pipe leak behind a bathroom wall. A condensation problem in a crawl space. Water intrusion after a heavy rain. Within 24 to 48 hours, mold can begin growing in damp conditions — and by the time most homeowners…
Every year, millions of homeowners list their properties on Airbnb, Vrbo, and other short-term rental platforms without updating their homeowners insurance. Most of them don’t find out they have a problem until a guest gets hurt, something gets stolen, or a pipe bursts during a stay — and the claim gets denied. I have worked…
Most homeowners I talk to have no idea what their liability limit actually is. They know they have homeowners insurance. They assume it covers them. And it does — up to a point that most of them have never checked. The standard homeowners policy carries a personal liability limit of somewhere between $100,000 and $300,000….
There is a coverage scenario most homeowners never think about until they are standing in a hotel parking lot with two kids, a dog, and a single bag of clothes, waiting for their insurance company to call back. A fire, a burst pipe, a gas leak, a structural collapse — any event that makes your…
Last spring, I spoke with a homeowner in suburban Atlanta who had just written a $4,700 check to replace her central air conditioning system’s compressor after an electrical surge fried it. She assumed her homeowners policy would cover it. Her adjuster told her it wouldn’t. She called us, and when I pulled up her policy,…
When people think about water damage and homeowners insurance, they usually think about burst pipes or a leaky roof. Those scenarios are well-covered territory. But there is a water damage scenario that catches more homeowners completely unprepared than almost any other: sewage backup. I have worked with homeowners who had thousands of dollars of cleanup…
Most homeowners I work with know what their deductible is. They say something like, “I think it’s $1,000” or “we have a $2,500 deductible.” What they almost always mean is their all-peril deductible — the baseline amount they pay out of pocket before coverage kicks in on most claims. What they do not know is…
