Homeowners cover priced for the house you actually own.

Replacement cost vs. actual cash value (the difference matters)

This is the single most important line item on a homeowners policy and almost no one reads it. Replacement cost (RCV) coverage pays what it would cost today to rebuild your home or replace the contents with equivalent quality, no depreciation deducted. Actual cash value (ACV) coverage pays the depreciated value — what your eight-year-old roof is worth today, not what a new roof costs. The difference is real money. A $20,000 roof replacement claim under RCV pays $20,000. The same claim under ACV, with an eight-year-old composition roof, might pay $7,000, leaving you to cover $13,000 yourself. Most policies default to RCV on the dwelling and ACV on the roof — that ACV roof endorsement has quietly become standard in storm-heavy states because it lets carriers offer a lower headline premium. Read the declarations page. If your roof is more than fifteen years old, ACV may be the only option a carrier will offer; budget the difference into your roofing fund instead of assuming the policy will cover it.

Hurricane / flood / earthquake: when standard policy doesn't cover you

Three perils that many homeowners assume are covered, and aren't. Flood is excluded from every standard homeowners policy in the United States — full stop. If you're in a FEMA-designated flood zone, your mortgage requires NFIP coverage, but anyone outside a flood zone has to buy it voluntarily, and roughly twenty-five percent of NFIP claims come from outside high-risk zones. Earthquake is excluded everywhere except as a paid rider; in California it's a separate CEA policy, typically $800 to $2,000 a year. Hurricane wind is technically covered, but most coastal states now use a separate percentage-based deductible (1 to 5 percent of dwelling value) that kicks in when a storm is officially named. The honest move: pull your policy declarations once a year, look at the perils-excluded section, and price out riders for any peril your ZIP actually faces. The math on a $300/year flood policy versus a $40,000 flood claim is not subtle.

The 80% rule: why under-insuring kicks back at claim time

Most homeowners policies include a coinsurance clause that requires you to insure your dwelling at no less than eighty percent of its replacement cost. Drop below that threshold and the carrier doesn't simply pay less on a partial loss — they pro-rate every claim by the ratio of your actual coverage to the required eighty percent. Numerical example: rebuild cost on your home is $400,000, so the 80% threshold is $320,000. You carry $240,000 of dwelling coverage to save on premium. A kitchen fire causes $80,000 of damage. The carrier owes you $80,000 × ($240,000 / $320,000) = $60,000, minus your deductible. You're out of pocket $20,000 you didn't expect. The fix is annual: ask your agent or carrier to re-run the rebuild cost estimate every year, particularly after any major remodel. Construction inflation has run roughly seven percent annually for the last four years; a Coverage A figure that was correct in 2022 is probably twenty-five percent low today.

How to inventory your home so a claim actually reimburses you

Personal property coverage typically runs at fifty to seventy percent of your dwelling limit, but actually collecting on it after a total loss requires you to prove what you owned. Most homeowners cannot. After a fire, you have thirty to sixty days to submit a sworn proof of loss listing every claimed item, with purchase year and approximate value. From memory, while standing in temporary housing, that's a brutal exercise. The fix takes ninety minutes once and protects you forever: walk every room with your phone in video mode, narrate what you're filming ("Sony 65-inch TV, bought 2023, paid $1,200"), open closets and cabinets so jewelry, electronics and tools are visible, and back the file up to cloud storage so it survives the very loss it documents. For high-value items — jewelry, art, firearms, collectibles — schedule them as named riders on the policy with appraisals attached. Standard personal property coverage caps jewelry at $1,500 to $2,500 in a single loss; a scheduled rider raises that cap and removes the deductible.