Will Your Homeowners Insurance Cover Items in Storage?

10 Aug Will Your Homeowners Insurance Cover Items in Storage?

Home insurance policies generally protect your finances against damaged or stolen personal items up to the specified coverage limit. Your insurer may also have plans that financially protect your personal belongings from various events like fire, severe weather, theft, etc., even when you’re traveling or staying at a hotel. Typically, your furniture, appliances, electronics, clothes, and jewelry are regarded as your personal belongings by your policy.

However, if these belongings are stored anywhere away from your house, such as in a self-storage facility, your homeowners’ insurance plan may not always provide coverage for them. In that case, you may need to purchase additional insurance to protect these belongings. This article discusses in-depth about protecting your stored goods.

What Homeowners Insurance Covers?

Typically, homeowners insurance covers the following personal property items:

• Furniture
• Television and entertainment systems
• Kitchen appliances
• Clothing
• Trees and plants
• Artwork
• Bikes
• Carpets and rugs
• Lawn and gardening equipment
• Jewelry

However, homeowners’ insurance doesn’t cover electronic gadgets and home appliances damaged due to power failure. Certain policies may also not cover damage caused to computers.

How Is Home Insurance Linked to Items in Storage?

Here’s how your homeowners’ policy treats your items in storage:

• Coverage Provided: If you have certain possessions stored off your premises, some home insurance policies may offer these items the same coverage as the belongings inside your house, but the coverage limits might be lower than the standard personal property coverage. In this situation, you can increase the total dwelling or personal property coverage to augment your coverage limits, but this can also raise your yearly premiums.

• Off-premises coverage limits:  Typically, off-premises coverage can financially safeguard your belongings kept in a storage unit away from your residence. However, the coverage limit provided is typically around 10% of the total personal property coverage, generally ranging between $1,000 and $5,000. You can increase the total coverage limit of your homeowners’ insurance coverage or get separate storage insurance if the total value of your storage unit possessions is higher.

• Theft-only limits: If your personal items are damaged or stolen in a burglary or theft, the amount that’ll be reimbursed by your personal property coverage comes with fixed limits, irrespective of the value of the goods damaged or stolen. Typically, items like money, jewelry, watches, watercraft, collectibles, etc., have a coverage limit between $1,500 and $2,500, irrespective of their actual value.

• High-value item limits: Avoid placing precious and high-value items in a storage unit away from your house. You can include additional endorsements such as scheduled property coverage to protect high-end items like family heirlooms, priceless art, antiques, and precious jewelry, that are typically excluded from your standard personal property coverage.

Storage Insurance

Storage insurance plans usually have their premiums calculated monthly and have a limit to the coverage amount provided. Your self-storage facility may offer insurance to protect the items stored in their units from perils like theft or damage. They may also refer you to a preferred third party to purchase the coverage. Some facilities might need you to mandatorily purchase storage insurance if you don’t have sufficient homeowners insurance to cover the cost of the items stored in the facility.

Perils covered by storage insurance include:

• Theft
• Wind
• Hurricane
• Water damage
• Hail
• Lightning
• Tornado
• Fire
• Smoke

Perils exclude by storage insurance include:

• Flooding
• Vermin
• Mold and mildew
• Earthquake
• War

You should always contact your insurance agents to check what coverage your homeowners insurance includes.

Cover Your Storage Items with Kevin S. Dougherty Insurance

Looking to increase the coverage for your stored goods? Contact our homeowners’ insurance experts Kevin and Merci at Kevin S. Dougherty Insurance today. We can help to financially safeguard your stored items with minimal impact on your premiums.