Check your home insurance now, avoid regret later
I’ll never forget the water-filled light bulbs.
Weeks after Hurricane Floyd flooded the North Carolina towns of Princeville and Tarboro in 1999, I made a reporting trip there to find out how residents were coping. A man escorted me inside his single-story house, which had been submerged for days under water the height of a basketball hoop. As we stood under the kitchen chandelier (his table had floated into the living room), he reached up to tap the light fixture’s flame-shaped bulbs. Water had displaced the gas inside.
The man was happy to salvage his framed, water-stained army discharge certificate. But as for the ruined house, he doubted his insurance would pay the full cost of rebuilding.
Being underinsured still happens more often than you think. In fact, there’s a good chance you have insufficient homeowners insurance coverage. You can fix that, and protect yourself financially, by shopping for home insurance carefully and making a few phone calls. Here’s how.
Beware undercoverage
The core of your home insurance policy is dwelling coverage: the part of the policy that will pay to repair or rebuild your home. The policy specifies the maximum amount it will pay. Watch out, because your dwelling coverage limit could be too low.