Two Ways To Replace Destroyed Personal Property With Homeowners Insurance
Did you suffer a house fire and have many of your belongings destroyed by the flames? If so, a home insurance policy can really help make you whole again by replacing all of the things that were damaged. Here are some tips for dealing with your personal property so you can get back what you lost.
Let Insurance Adjuster Handle It
The easiest way to deal with personal property is to let an insurance adjuster handle it all. A lot of assumptions will be made about the things that were in your home to come to a final total in regards to how much personal property was lost. This can work for or against you in a few ways though. The adjuster knows that you have things like beds, couches, appliances, and things of that nature, and those will get replaced with similar items without any questions asked. However, many small items will likely be missed in their estimates.
If you use an insurance adjuster, you are going to save a ton of time on the lengthy process of documenting all of the things that you lost in your home. This can practically be a full-time job, which you are simply unable to do since you need to list everything in your home to include it as a loss if you handle the job yourself.
Itemize All Your Destroyed Items Yourself
Your homeowners' insurance policy is likely going to cover your lost items in one of two ways if you do it yourself. Items that are not replaced are going to receive a depreciated cash value, which is based on the cost of the replacement and its appropriate depreciation. For example, your insurance policy may reduce an item's value by 5% for each year old it is, and have a cap on reducing the item's value by no more than 50%. This means a $100 item that is 10 years old would be depreciated down to $50 of a cash value that you would receive.
Meanwhile, any damaged item that is replaced with the exact same item will be replaced by giving you the value of what it would cost to buy the item new today. If the item cannot be bought new, then it would be for the replacement value of a similar item. A great example is if you had a laptop that was destroyed in a fire. Chances are they don't make that exact model laptop anymore, so you would be given the cash to buy a replacement laptop that is similar to the one that you had. Contact someone in your area for a quote on their insurance services.
