5 Things to Consider when Choosing the Right Home Insurance
Home insurance is one of the important backup plans you should have for your property, especially for your home. There are many unpredictable risks and uncontrollable events that may compromise your home’s safety.
Home insurance can protect the value of your home, as well as its contents after an unforeseen event. A home insurance policy covers the amount you need to rebuild your home during a disaster, fire, storm, flood or any other uncontrollable event.
Types of Home Insurance
You can choose between two types of home insurance. One may be costly than the other, but depending on your needs, picking one over the other has its advantages and disadvantages.
Total Replacement Cover Home Insurance
This type of insurance covers the amount to rebuild your home to its original state prior to the unforeseen event. Compared to the sum-insured coverage for home insurances, this type of home insurance reduces the possibility of underinsuring your home, but such home insurance is offered by limited banks and lenders only.
Sum-insured Cover Home Insurance
In this type of home insurance, you set the amount to repair or rebuild your home. You need to be accurate, or at least estimate the closest amount needed to repair or rebuild your home should you experience an unforeseen event. If you underestimate, you may not have enough in your insured amount to cover the expenses for repair or rebuilding.
5 Tips for Choosing the Right Home Insurance
1. Always read the fine print
There are several policies, limitations, conditions, and exclusions included in your home insurance. Be sure to read every detail stipulated in your home insurance contract before signing anything. Also, it is important to ask questions and details related to the conditions included in your home insurance. It is better to understand and ask your questions now rather than be surprised if you would want to apply for a claim.
2. Compare insurance policies by reading the Product Disclosure Statement (PDS)
Different insurers have different conditions when offering home insurances to clients. It would be advisable to read the PDS of the insurance quotations or offerings that you have, take down notes and compared each one accordingly. You can use these categories as benchmarks when comparing home insurances.
- Rates
- Stamp Duties
- Policy Discounts
- No claims bonus
- Years of Insurance Discounts
- Emergency Services Levy
- Good and Services Tax
- Definition of Events Included in the Home Insurance
3. Extended Covers
Ask your insurer if a sum-insured policy covers extended cover. For most sum-insured home insurance, a pre-agreed amount is already set. If the amount pre-set is not enough to repair or rebuild your home, check if your insurer offers a 30% top up on the sum insured. This is only applicable for total loss situations. Such extended covers may be enough to cover the gap between the sum insured in your policy and the total amount needed to rebuild your home.
4. Your Budget
Are your budget and current financial situations qualifying for the insurance you want or your need for your home? Home insurance premiums can start anywhere from $600 up to $3,000 for building insurance policies of $450,000. The amount of monthly premiums depends on the State that your property is located. If you would want to go for content insurance policy alone, it can go anywhere from $260 to $680 a month in premiums.
Some insurers offer online home insurance quotes depending on the details that you provide. Some even offer discounts for buying home insurances online.
Extra premiums may be required should you want to add other belongings to cover such as collections or jewelry.
5. Additional benefits
After getting the best rates possible for the insurance that you want for your home from the insurer of your choice, you may also want to explore the additional benefits that your insurer or other insurers may offer. Some insurers may offer Emergency Home Assistance without extra cost, ways of saving on your insurance premiums such as lower interest rates for advance payments, or free tailored policies personalized for you.
The bottom line in getting the best insurance available for your home is by asking around and knowing what to ask. Get a broker or insurance specialist that you can trust and is willing to accommodate your questions and hesitations. You can never go wrong with the right questions.
