Home Insurance Add-Ons To Consider
Home insurance is great, but it doesn't cover everything, and there are a few add-ons you should consider to enhance your coverage. Below are some of the things that you can include in your home insurance coverage by purchasing add-ons.
Natural Disasters
Many natural disasters are automatically excluded from homeowner's insurance. You can buy add-ons to protect you from loses associated with such disasters. For example, there are add-ons for flood, earthquake, and windstorm damages. You have to buy an add-on for each disaster you are worried about. For example, you need flooding insurance if your home is located in a low-lying area that is prone to floods.
Sewer Back-up
Damages caused by sewer backups are excluded from flooding insurance. Flooding insurance only covers damages from natural floods. The sewer backup add-on will come into play if your drain pipes bursts or if the municipal sewer malfunctions and send raw wastes back into your house.
Extended Building Cost
This coverage extends your building cost by a certain percentage. For example, if your coverage can give you $200,000 to reconstruct your house, you may be able to buy a 50% extended building cost. That way, you will get a maximum of $300,000 to rebuild your house if your home requires at least that much to reconstruct after a disaster. This add-on comes in handy if building costs skyrocket, as they typically do after a widespread disaster.
Code Compliance
There are cases where you are required to bring your house up to code during reconstruction. This will be the case if new building codes have come into effect since your house was constructed. Standard home insurance doesn't cover such costs, but a code-compliance add-on will help you pay for them.
Inflation Protection
You should also consider an inflation protection add-on to ensure your $100,000 will still hold the same value five years into the future. This is because money loses its value over time; a thousand dollars today might not buy the same building materials it could have bought a decade ago due to inflation. This add-on automatically increases your coverage limit in line with inflation.
Valuable Items
Standard home insurance only covers valuable items up to a limit, and the limit may be low if you have extremely valuable items. For example, a $2,500 limit on jewelry might not help you much if you have jewelry worth $50,000. The valuable-item add-on increases the limit so that you can actually replace your valuables if they are stolen or damaged.
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