There’s one common part of a home insurance policy where I see a lot of misconceptions – the personal property coverage limit. Your policy declarations will show this as “Personal Property” or “Coverage C” followed by a limit that can be hundreds of thousands of dollars. However, the declarations page will typically not go into detail showing the sub-limits for certain items – you have to dig deep into the policy to see that.
Every insurer has sub-limits for Jewelry, Artwork, Firearms, Memorabilia & other high-value items. For example, a carrier may only cover Jewelry up to $1000 per item, $5000 total for all Jewelry in the household. If you have a $10,000 necklace stolen you’ll only have $1000 covered. Your home deductible is likely $1000 or higher so you end up with nothing.
So what’s the solution?
A Scheduled personal property endorsement can be added to fill this coverage gap. The cost to schedule items on a home policy is only about 1-2% of the value of the items per year. From our previous example, that $10,000 necklace would cost about $130/year to insure with zero deductible. Another benefit to scheduling is that it will cover mysterious disappearance – not just theft/fire, etc.
If you have any questions about scheduled personal property please don’t hesitate to reach out. We’re here to make sure you’re properly covered!
