Onehousehold.Onereview.
Home, auto, umbrella, watercraft and valuables, reviewed together in one sitting.
What a household insures
Five policies.One review.
Where household claims fail
Your policies have edges.Claims fall down them.
You bought home, auto and valuables separately, then an umbrella over the top. Here are the three places they do not quite meet.
Home
Auto
Valuables
It only works if the policies underneath are big enough.
An umbrella tops up your home and auto cover once those run out. But it only does that if each of them is already insured up to the amount the umbrella asks for. Fall short on one, and on that claim the umbrella pays nothing.
How a home gets valued
Your house has two prices.Only one of them rebuilds it.
Almost every policy we open was valued once, when the house was bought, and renewed at that number ever since. Here is the problem with that, on a house bought eight years ago.
What it would sell for
$0
Market value. Follows the neighbourhood, the schools, and what the house down the road went for. It is the number people remember, and it is the wrong one.
Short by
$360k
What it costs to rebuild
$0
Lumber, labour, and the building code your town enforces this year. It ignores the neighbourhood entirely. This is the number that has to be on the policy.
Illustrative figures, but the shape is real and it is the most common reason a household claim pays short. Checking yours takes us about ten minutes.
Check your own policy
Go and look at your own policy.
You do not need us to find most of this. Pick a line and we will tell you exactly which page to open, what the wording looks like, and what is usually wrong with it.
Rebuild cost, or what it would sell for?
- Where to look
- Declarations page, Coverage A Dwelling
- What it says
- A dollar figure, sometimes with "Replacement Cost" beside it
- What goes wrong
- If that number is close to what your house would sell for, it is probably wrong. Rebuild cost ignores the land and the neighbourhood entirely.
Life moves. The policy doesn't.
A home and auto policy is correct on the day it is written and quietly wrong two years later. Any of these is a reason to have it looked at again.
Common questions, answered