How to Make a Home Inventory: A Guide to Documenting Your Possessions for Insurance Purposes
When it comes to protecting your most valuable assets, having a comprehensive home inventory is crucial. As a trusted insurance agency in Montecito and Santa Barbara, we’ll guide you through the process of creating a home inventory to safeguard your possessions in case of unforeseen events.
Use Your Smart Phone for Quick and Easy Documentation
We highly recommend utilizing your smart phone to simplify the process of creating a home inventory. You can take a video of your entire home, either before or after a move, or prior to potential evacuation during a disaster. Here's how to do it effectively:
Capture Everything: While recording, be thorough. Open closets, drawers, cabinets, and document every valuable possession. Be sure you capture items as clearly as possible.
No Need for Receipts: Forget about the hassle of keeping and organizing paper receipts. With a video inventory, you have visual proof of your possessions, making the claims process much smoother.Of course, if you have receipts that are easy to access, make sure to store in a safe place as the more info the better.
Secure Storage: Don't rely solely on your phone to store the video. Save it in a secure location like cloud storage or an external hard drive for added protection.
High-Value Items Require Special Attention
Certain possessions, like jewelry, fine art, china, and silver, often hold substantial value and may require special insurance considerations. We recommend having high-value items professionally appraised to determine their current market value accurately. This information will be crucial for insurance purposes. As with your video, you’ll want to make sure that you can easily access copies of any appraisals remotely. Standard home insurance policies may not adequately cover high-value items. We recommend considering the need for specialized insurance in an effort to fully protect these possessions.
Insurance for Individual Items
In some cases, you may want to insure individual items separately, such as high-value artwork displayed on your walls. Insurance companies may offer more favorable rates if your high-value items, like artwork, are protected by an alarm system.
Understand Personal Property Insurance
Your personal property is likely to include protection for everything that would fall out of your house if it were turned upside down and shaken. While this is true, personal property insurance may have limitations. Here's what you need to know:
Coverage Gaps: Many high-value items might not be adequately covered by your standard home insurance policy. This is where additional policies come into play.
Consult an Expert: To determine the precise coverage needed for your personal property, consult with an insurance professional like the Weiser team. We can help you understand the gaps in your coverage and recommend appropriate solutions.
Creating a comprehensive home inventory is an essential step in safeguarding your possessions against unforeseen events. Our recommendation to use your smartphone for documentation, coupled with our expertise in insuring high-value items, can provide you with peace of mind. Most importantly, don't delay; take action today to protect what matters most to you.