Choosing a Home Insurance Coverage | AWS Insurance | New Orleans, Metairie

01 Aug Choosing a Home Insurance Coverage | AWS Insurance | New Orleans, Metairie

Being in the state of Louisiana, there are a number of natural disasters that can damage your home from floods, hurricanes, strong thunderstorms, and on rare occasions – hail. While you need flood insurance to protect your home from storm surges caused by a hurricane, homeowners insurance is just as important to protect your home from other natural or accidental threats such as roof damage caused by damaging winds or plumbing issues causing a sewage backup. Your home is your sanctuary, so keep it safe with an affordable home insurance policy through your local insurance expert.

What does Home Insurance cover?

Most homeowner insurance policies cover damage from things like fires, windstorms, lightning, hail, or even vandalism (called standard perils in insurance lingo). Other perils may include theft, damage from vehicles, explosion, and personal liability. Here are the 5 most typical classifications of coverage, as determined by the Insurance Services Office.

1. Dwelling Coverage: Covers the cost to repair or rebuild your home. This may include plumbing, heating and air conditioning, and electrical wiring that has been damaged by a covered peril. This coverage usually extends to extended or detached structures like garages, guest houses, sheds, and fences.
2. Personal Property Coverage: Reimburses you for items damaged or destroyed by a covered cause. This typically includes furniture, stolen jewelry, clothes, and electronics. The two types of policies for this coverage are cash value and replacement cost. The first policy will pay you the cost of replacing your items, minus depreciation. A replacement cost policy, on the other hand, will reimburse the full cost of replacing your items at the current price.
3. Loss of Use/Additional Living Expense Coverage: This covers any costs that may be occurred if you have to temporarily move out of your home while damages are being repaired.
4. Personal Liability Coverage: This covers damage for which you may be legally liable if you or your family members are responsible for causing injuries or damages to others. These claims can include your pet causing injury to someone, someone falling down your stairs, or accidental damage to another’s property.
5. Additional Coverages: There are a number of other coverage options you can get that can expand your current coverage. For example, additional replacement cost coverage increases the amount covered in the event of a total loss. Other options can that may be offered are identity fraud coverage, coverage for water back-up, and sometimes even green home coverage which will help repair damage by replacing or rebuilding using environmentally-friendly materials.

What isn’t covered?

Each policy is different, so you should always check the specifics when you are deciding on which to choose from. However, there are a few exclusions that are commonly left out of home insurance policies; these are earth movement, water damage, power failure, neglect, and intentional loss (e.g. arson). Because of these exclusions, you might want to consider getting flood insurance coverage, especially being in Louisiana. Be sure to check out our post on how to best decide flood insurance coverage if you are thinking about getting it.

How much do you need?

While there is no specific amount that is right for everyone, here are a few things to keep in mind when determining the amount of insurance you are buying:

What would it cost to rebuild?

You want to plan for the worst case scenario, so you need homeowners insurance coverage policy that would allow you to rebuild from the ground up.

Is your home older?

If so, it may cost more than it did originally to build using today’s building code standards.

Does your home have custom upgrades?

This is important to consider because houses or property made with specialized materials and labor may cost more than it originally did to rebuild. Consider a home insurance policy that offers more than 100% extended replacement cost to cover above the dwelling coverage limit.

What is your personal property worth?

We recommend you take an inventory of your things. That way, in the unfortunate case that you have to file an insurance claim because of theft or damage, you can more accurately estimate the value of your personal property.

–

AWS Insurance serves New Orleans, Metairie, Kenner, and Southern Louisiana by providing protection for your home, business, or family with affordable plans in property insurance, liability insurance, life insurance, car insurance, and flood insurance from our Metairie, LA office. Our corporate clients can rest assured that our dedicated advisers at AWS Risk Management, LLC will help you implement workable solutions that achieve maximum asset protection with minimal cost of risk to your company.