Insurance World

‘House Insurance’ is an insurance policy that combines insurance on your physical house as well as your contents within. If something were to happen, flood, fire, vandalism, theft etc. you the owner will get back everything including your house and its valuable contents that were damaged according to the restrictions of the policy. Of course we all hope and plan that we never have to implement a claim and some never do. Yet, being prepared should you ever have to file a claim will save you alot of time, money and frustration at the worst of times; when you need help from your insurance company. With most large insurance companies developing an online presence many people can now compare prices and get a home owner insurance quote via the internet with relative ease.

Every home owner insurance policy covers two basic important areas, that being the property with physical contents and liability or damages to self and others. If you the home owner are responsible for unintentionally injuring or damaging other’s property then your policy will also protect you from paying for damages done to other people. If the insurance company determines that you were at fault than the chances of getting a claim are pretty slim abviously.

The main benefits of a home owner insurance policy are as follows:

1) In case of any damage done to the physical house the owner of the house insurance policy gets back the amount that has been damaged.
2) The legal responsibilities of the owner are compensated.
3) The temporary living expenses are also given in case the owner is forced to leave his home because of a severe damage to his house.
4) Policies will cover your losses whether you are physically at home or not during the incident.
5) The house insurance policy covers the damage done to the house due to different natural calamities such as hurricanes, tornadoes, flood and earthquake but most of the time they are excluded from the standard insurance policy. If you live in areas that frequent natural disasters many insurance companies will provide insurance like this for an additional fee.
6) A policy can also contain items that you take with you away from the property like laptops for example.

The One Tip That Every Home Owner Should Do:

I certainly hope you never have to file a claim, but just in case you do this is one tip that will save you hours and hour of frustration. There is one big problem that frequently occurs when someone has to file a claim. The insurance company wants to know what you had and how much it was worth. Well, that’s all fine and dandy if they’ll just take your word for it but most of them are going to want to see proof in the form of receipts. I’m sure most of you are following my thinking on this already. How do you produce the receipts if they have just been lost in a flood or fire? Or what if your not able to turn up the receipt because it got lost somehow. An insurance claim can get really sticky at this point because it becomes your word with no proof of your previous items. This has been a really big problem for insurance companies as well as home owners.

How technology has come to the rescue:

Most people either have a home video camera or know someone that does and if not can probly find a store that rents one. In an effort to make the insurance claiming process simpler most home owner insurance companies will recommend that you take a home video of every room of your house with contents and keep the video off site.

If you think about this it works really well - there are even home inventory companies now that do this full time and store the videos in a safe place for you. The insurance companies love this because now they can see firsthand what your trying to claim and it becomes way easier to determine the value of items when they can actually see the make and model simply through the video.

The benefits for you the home owner are huge as well and this has been known to really shorten a legetamite claim and will also guarantee that the price you get for your items is closer to what they are actually worth. The biggest benefit is you may find there are alot of items that show up in the video that you had forgotten about and therefore your total claim may end up being alot higher than simply be memory. It’s recommended to update the video every so often as your contents change.

So let’s recap: use the internet to get a home owner insurance quote to compare companies to ensure your not overpaying for your policy. Do a video inventory of your home with contents and keep the video off site or in another city if you can. It doesn’t take long but may be well worth it to you at some point.

As a nation we in the UK are becoming wealthier. With the rise in our overall wealth has come a desire to spend our money on certain luxuries we enjoy. And one of the boom industries when it comes to spending this money is on the second home – the cottage in the countryside where we can spend the weekends. However, as this is considered your second home, and not your principal residence, the home insurance is going to cost you more than it will do for your principal residential home. To avoid this expense becoming burdensome, however, you may want to consider taking the following steps:

Security

The Number 1 reason why your second home will cost you more to insure than your principal home is because you are not there as often. As such, your lack of presence providers potential thieves with more of an opportunity to steal items from your home. In order to mitigate the chances of this happening, and so as to placate your home insurance provider into lowering your home insurance premiums, you will need to make sure that your second home has a sufficiently good security system. In effect, what this means is that you second home should have:

- a central alarm system
- a smoke detector
- deadbolt lock systems on your doors
- no area of the garden should be obscure, so you may need to cut back trees
- adequate lighting, which you should have on a timer system so that you second home is not consistently in the dark
- secure main entrance and back door
- secure garage area

Home insurance loss assessment advisors calculate that you are 20 – 30 percent less likely to have your home broken into if you have a good security surveillance system in place than if you do not.

Employ and agent

Employing an agent or friend to check in on your house daily and clear away any junk mail or local newspapers that may be delivered to your home can also help to reduce the chances of your second home being broken into, thus reduce your second home insurance premiums. Keep in mind that nothing makes a house look unlived in more than a collection of mail on the floor mat.

Select a relatively crime free neighbourhood

Finally, when looking around to buy your second home, make sure that you select a neighbourhood where the crime figures are relatively low. Crime figures are a major factor in calculating home insurance, so if you chose to live in an area where the crime figures are high, you should automatically expect to be paying more in home insurance premiums for that home.