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Hurricane season is right around the corner, therefore it’s a great time to do an insurance check up for your home and property.

As many along the coastal regions know, hurricanes can be destructive with the strongest ones causing billions of dollars of damage in the U.S. It’s important to have an insurance policy to cover your goods before a tropical system strikes. We will go over some basics below.

There are several different policies to cover different types of dwellings, which include manufactured homes, condominiums, rental units, and farmlands. There are two different policies for owning a home. The first one is homeowners insurance, with the other being dwelling forms. Homeowners insurance covers both property and liabilities while the dwelling forms only cover property losses. Dwelling forms are more typical for someone that owns a home but does not live in it full time. Check with your agent to see which one suits you best and update your policy if needed.

The four categories that make up covered property in an insurance plan is the dwelling, any other structures attached to the house, personal property within the home and loss of use. Loss of use is essentially the expenses that will be covered if your property is deemed unhabitable after a disaster. Most property insurance plans will cover hurricane damage but will not cover flood damage, therefore you will need to get a separate policy for possible flood related damages. More info: https://www.floodsmart.gov/

In order to know if you have enough coverage in the event of a hurricane, your insurance agent will go over the types of settlements with you. This includes replacement cost coverage, actual cash value, special payments, market value coverage and stated value. For the insurance policy to replace your entire home (replacement cost coverage), 80% of the property must be insured. To increase your chances to receive good hurricane coverage and lower premiums, you should take steps to mitigate the risk of your home being damaged from a hurricane. Impact resistant doors and windows and even the shape of your roof can help save you money.

Location can affect the homeowner’s choices when looking for a policy as well. People further inland may find fewer choices than those along the coast. The flipside to that is people near the coast will pay a higher cost for a hurricane coverage policy than those inland. It’s also worth mentioning that many insurance companies will issue a temporary ban on new coverage when a disaster is imminent and will not allow you to add insurance to your preexisting plan until the threat is over, so make sure you are covered well before a hurricane is forecast to impact your area! If you are evacuating your home ahead of the storm, make sure you bring your insurance documents with you.

If you are interested in purchasing hurricane insurance you can generally find it through voluntary markets or through a shared market, in the case voluntary markets don’t provide coverage for your region (high risk area). In some high risk areas, affordable coverage may be hard to come by. One option is to look through the FAIR (Fair Access to Insurance Requirements) plan. This is a state-mandated program that can help individuals in these high risk areas. More info here: https://content.naic.org/state-insurance-departments

Credit: NOAA
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Story Image via Pixabay.com

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Hurricane Preparedness: Insurance Checkup