The Purpose of Insuring a Vacant Home

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We’ve shared with you the importance of understanding your home owner insurance policy as well as different types of deductions you may be entitled to under said policy. We’ve also given some advice on travelling smart, fire safety tips and vacation preparedness to help protect your home, especially when you’re away.

Today let’s talk about the importance of insuring a vacant home.

First though, we’ll look at some instances when you may have a vacant home to insure…..
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#1: Inherited Property; upon their death(s), many of us are left with –and find ourselves responsible for–property our parents, or grandparents, owned. Sometimes it’s a quick and easy process to clean out and sell this property. Other times it is not. A home owner policy covers the home where the owner resides. Any other scenario would result in a change of policy. EX: homeowner to dwelling (if you’re renting it out) or Vacant for the interim while the estate is sorted out.

#2: Vacant Rental Property; if your rental property stays vacant for more than 90 days, a (Landlord) Dwelling policy would need to be replaced. If the home is undergoing renovations or additional construction, that is a different policy entirely also.

#3: Divorce or Death of a spouse; You’ve moved on and moved out but do not want to sell or rent out your home. Again, if the home owner is not occupying the dwelling more than 50% of the time, the policy needs to be changed. Depending on circumstances, this may mean changing from a ‘home owner’ policy to either dwelling, 2nd residence, or vacant home policy.

Now that we’ve determined what constitutes a ‘vacant’ dwelling, let’s discuss a couple of reasons you’d want to insure one.

*Insuring the home protects the new owner(s) or responsible parties from dishing out loads of cash should there be a loss by a covered peril (Fire, Windstorm, Hail, etc.)

*The home has equity which can be used for different purposes and lenders want to be sure their interest in the home is protected.
 
For many reasons, most companies in the standard home insuring business will not insure a vacant home, but we have companies that do. So, if you’re in need of covering an unoccupied dwelling, give us a call!

Until next time take care and remember....an old, vacant home may not seem like much but it's value can't be understated!

Tommy Curtis and Staff