Baton Rouge Home Insurance
60Before you contact your local Baton Rouge home insurance agents it is a good idea to know what exactly homeowners insurance involves. Although home insurance agents provide a valuable service, their job is to make money off of you. As such, the more you know, the more you can save and decide what you may or may not need.
Home insurance/Homeowners insurance (protects your house from damage, covers your belongings, and covers bodily injury on your property):
What does home insurance usually consist of?
Property damage: Covers damage to house and other physical assets as a result of weather. This would include things such as a thunderstorm or lightining. It does not cover earthquakes or floods, for which you’d have to get separate policies. If you want flood insurance, check out the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP).
Medical payments insurance: Pays for medical expenses when others (not you or your family) are accidentally injured on your property.
Personal Liability Insurance: Covers you and your family members for other’s bodily injury and/or property damage for which you are responsible for. It protects you against a lawsuit or a claim. If you have a dog, keep in mind that some companies might not cover injuries that your dog does to others. If you have a dog, when shopping around, ask what each company’s policy is in regards to injuries from dogs. Usually liability conditions are written in A/B form. For example, 10/40, which would mean $10,000 in bodily injury liability for one person and $40,000 in bodily injury liability for all people in one accident.
Contents insurance: Covers your and your families’ personal belongings. If you have something really expensive or valuable in your house, such as jewelry, to be sure that it is 100% covered you might have to mention it specifically in your policy by adding a “floater”. The standard contents insurance policy is usually 10% of your home value.
Additional living expenses coverage: If there is damage to your house for which your homeowners’ insurance is paying for, your insurance company can also pay for costs necessary while your home is being repaired (assuming you can’t live there if your home is being repaired). This would include hotel stays and resteraunt meals.
Many types of factors determine how expensive your homeowner’s insurance will be. This includes what your house is made out of, the amount of fire protection in the form of fire departments and fire hydrants around your house, and your home’s age. Your community is given a fire protection class, which determines how well it can respond to a fire within it.
Fair Access to Insurance Requirements (FAIR) Plan: Offers homeowners insurance to those who can’t get it due to a number of reasons. For example, your home might consist of unusual building materials or there is very little fire protection in your neighborhood, making your Baton Rouge home insurance shopping very difficult.
Actual Cash Value: How much it will cost to fix or replace damaged property, taking into account depreciation. In other words, if your front porch is damaged from a thunderstorm, you’ll get money equal to the value of your porch when it was damaged, not the cost of a brand new porch.
Renters Insurance:
Although your landlord owns the building within which you live, their homeowners insurance does not cover your personal belongings, just the building itself. It covers your belongings in many situations. For example, it covers the cost to replace your items in the event of a robbery, the cost to replace your items if they got stolen from your car, the cost of replace your items from water damage, or the cost to replace your belongings in the event of a fire. Insure.com has a long list of all instances when renters insurance would apply:
- "Fire or lightning
- Windstorm or hail
- Explosion
- Riot or civil commotion
- Damage caused by aircraft
- Damage caused by vehicles
- Smoke
- Vandalism or malicious mischief
- Theft
- Volcanic eruption
- Falling objects
- Weight of ice, snow, or sleet
- Accidental discharge or overflow of water or steam from within a plumbing, heating, air conditioning, or automatic fire-protective sprinkler system, or from a household appliance
- Sudden and accidental tearing apart, cracking, burning, or bulging of a steam or hot water heating system, an air conditioning or automatic fire-protective system
- Freezing of a plumbing, heating, air conditioning or automatic, fire-protective sprinkler system, or of a household appliance
- Sudden and accidental damage from artificially generated electrical current (does not include loss to a tube, transistor or similar electronic component)"
Furthermore, your renters policy will cover you from bodily injury liability occurring on your premises. In a standard renter’s insurance policy, your belongings are not covered from earthquakes and floods. However, you can add coverage from these two acts of nature by talking to your insurer. If you happen to have expensive property such as jewelry or a flat screen TV, you may need to purchase a separate “floater” for each to make sure that these valuable belongings are covered. It is recommended to make an inventory of your belongings to decide how much renters insurance to purchase.
Also, keep in mind that your belongings are insured for either their actual cash value or their replacement cost. Actual cash value (ACV) takes into account depreciation. For example, if your HDTV television is robbed, you’ll get money equal to the value of the TV when it was stolen, not the cost you paid for it when you bought it. If you want, you could make your policy take into account the “brand new cost” of each item, which is represented by a “replacement cost policy”. Of course, your premiums will be higher if you take out a replacement cost policy over the standard actual cash value policy.
Tips to save money on home insurance in Baton Rouge or renters insurance:
Shop around: Don’t stop at one company. Different companies underwrite differently. In other words, they assess how risky your property is differently, resulting in different premiums.
Raise your deductible: Yes, you’ll have to pay more if your property and/or belongings do get damaged, but you’ll also pay a lot less to your insurance company.
Combined coverage: Try to see if you can get a discount if you insure your house and/or belongings with the same company as your car.
Safety matters: You might be eligible for some discounts if you have a security and/or safety systems such as a fire extinguisher and/or fire alarm.
Before you buy: If you can’t decide on which house to buy, one of them might have a significantly higher homeowners or renters insurance bill.
Related hubs:
And, of course, I have this Baton Rouge Home Insurance Guide!
