Protecting Your Home from Loss Due to Theft

Your home is filled with memories, personal mementos, and most importantly, your family; the risk of losing your valued possessions to theft is a situation you never want to encounter. Ensuring that damages and loss due to theft are covered by your home insurance is important. Here are the questions you should ask yourself and your insurance agent about protecting your home in case of a break-in, and things you can do to protect your home and reduce your insurance rates.

 

Look Over Your Existing Policy

 

The first step in protecting your home is to see if your existing policy covers both your property and the contents of your property in case of a break-in. Most basic homeowner’s policies do not cover these, and so you’ll want to get a clear picture of what you need before proceeding.

 

Asking Your Agent

 

There may be a number of things you can do to reduce the amount you will pay for theft protection, including combining existing policies and making changes to your home’s security. If you already have homeowner’s insurance, adding theft protection may be cheaper than buying a separate policy, especially if you were to go with a different company or broker. Installing an alarm system, adding locks to windows, and other types of home security protection may qualify you for a discounted rate on your insurance.

 

Creating Peace Of Mind

 

Regardless of the insurance issues, protecting your home and family in case of a break-in is important to your peace of mind. Things such as simply hanging a security sign in your window, leaving lights on when you are not home at night, and changing your routine can deter theft. They may not qualify you for a reduced insurance rate, but may protect your home nonetheless.

 

Free to Our Customers

We highly recommend that you take a look at the Digital Locker and use it to its fullest advantage. It is a way that you can keep a personal inventory of everything you own.

The Digital Locker is free and you can use it online or you can download the app and use it on your phone (both iPhone and Android). This first link will take you to an Allstate web page where you can learn a bit more about it and the second link will take you right to the Digital Locker website.

 

http://www.allstate.com/digital-locker.aspx?cid=OTC-SOC-T-131201:Innovation

 

https://www.digitallocker.com/Home/Dashboard/View

How Homeowner’s Insurance Values Your Property

The first time you see the value your homeowner’s insurance has placed on your home, it might shock you a little. That’s because the number is probably nowhere near what you paid for your home, or what it is worth on the market. There is a very good reason for this, and it can be a little confusing at first. Before you panic, take a look at how an insurance company values your home.

 

Reconstruction Cost Only

 

Your homeowner’s insurance covers the actual physical building that is your home, along with everything that is in it. The purpose of homeowner’s insurance is to make sure that if the worst were to happen, your home would be restored to the same level as before the incident. So, if your home were to burn to the ground, homeowner’s insurance would pay to completely rebuild the structure and replace everything inside it.

 

The value that is placed on your home is based on a complicated system of calculations used to determine what it would cost to rebuild your home from the ground up. Things like the price of building materials and cost of labor are all taken into consideration. What isn’t included in this amount is the value of your land.

 

Why Isn’t Land Included?

 

Even if your house were to burn completely to the ground, you would still have your land. You don’t lose that, nor do you lose the value of the land. In many cases, the land on which the home sits is more valuable than the structure itself, especially in high in-demand areas. When calculating the value of your home, you insurance company does not add in the cost of purchasing the land, because you don’t need to pay for that again.

 

What About Market Value?

 

Homeowner’s insurance isn’t really concerned with market value, because so much of it is wrapped up in things like the land, the location, and the state of the real estate market. All your insurance company is worried about is what it would cost to recreate your home exactly as it was in that same spot. So, market value and reconstruction cost really have very little bearing on each other, except for the connection between pricey areas and the cost of building materials which can be correlated.

 

The bottom line is, as long as your insurance agent has the most accurate information about your home-square footage, building materials used, and all the important features-they can calculate an accurate amount of insurance coverage for you.