Home Insurance Austin, Texas, United States of America
Hi I'm Lucas with bound insurance, I'm the personal lines agent which means I work with home insurance, auto insurance, motorcycle, boats, things like that. I want to talk to you about home insurance and what coverages you should really worry about. I'm just going to run through the basics and kind of elaborate on what's important and what the main things you should focus on. First thing is going to be the dwelling itself, I want to say dwelling this is actually covering the structure, say there has been a fire, it burns down , this is going to rebuild your home.
The main thing to worry about on this is how it's valued. There is two different ways in the industry to value a dwelling, there is replacement cost which is the way to go and then there is actual cash value. Actual cash value is going to look on "Oh, your home is X amount years old, we are going to deduct some many dollars" whereas the replacement cost is what's going to get your home rebuilt to what your home was.
The next thing is going to be other structures, this covers your storage building, shed, and kind of out building or fence you have around the property. Personal property covers things that are not built into the house, your furniture, clothing, appliances, now if you have anything of high value you are going to want to list it individually, so anything that's over $5,000 say jewelry, furs, guns, be sure to let your agent know about these things, because if there is a fire your regular personal property coverage might not cover the high value items.
Loss of use, what this coverage is say if there is a fire while your dwelling coverage is covering the rebuilding of your home, you are going to have to find a place to stay, an apartment, a hotel or something for a few months while your home is in construction and this just covers those expenses that you really didn't think about.
Next thing you will probably see on your policy is liability and right under that is going to be your medical payments to others or none residents, say someone is over and they are visiting, they trip and fall and injure themselves, well medical payments is going to come up first and pay up to what your limits are in, $1,000, $5,000, whatever you might have on your policy. Now, once it goes past that, say if the person tries to sue you, then you have your liability to cover you, and that's usually in the 100's of 1000's.
Your liability also covers your pets, now what I mean by this is say if your neighbor is visiting and your dog bites them or the cat jumps on them and scratches them and they have to go to the hospital and injuries like that, it will pay for it. Now because of this, insurance companies are real strict on what animals they allow. Some insurance companies might not cover your animal liability if you have more aggressive breeds or breeds considered to be aggressive like Rottweiler, Pit-bull, Chowchows, things like that. The deductible on your home insurance policy is the amount that you are responsible for.
Now, when choosing how high or low you want your deductible of course the higher you go with your deductible will keep your premium down, it's a good idea to kind of go the higher one because really insurance is for catastrophic losses anyhow, but at the same time you don't want to go so high that it's going to break your bank if your roof blows off or if you have a fire or something like that. Be sure you know what your home insurance policy covers. It's always better to ask questions than to not know when you have a claim.
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