MONDAY, MARCH 11, 2019
 Garages are not simply store rooms for junk. They can also house some of your most valuable possessions. Your car, a boat, expensive sports gear, electronics and more might all live within its walls. These items all need protection. So, you’ll often want your homeowners insurance to cover these possessions. Will it? Can other policies also help?
Homeowners Contents Insurance
If you store expensive items within your garage, then you might face higher cost risks. In other words, the more expensive your belongings, the more you might have to claim on home insurance. So, make sure your home's contents insurance applies to the items within the garage of high value. Think of items like:
- Power tools
- Lawn mowers
- Bikes
- Fishing equipment, canoes, kayaks
- Your car
- Sporting gear and equipment
- Electronics like GPS devices or radios
- Extra freezers and their food contents
If you have high possessions coverage, you can get funding to repair or replace items like these. To set the limits, take a full appraisal of the value of the most-important items in the garage. As necessary, compile receipts and photographs to support this value.
After adding up the value of these items, get contents insurance worth at least that value. Keep in mind, you'll ideally want replacement cost insurance to cover items at their full value. However, some policies will only offer cash value coverage. It will cover only the price of depreciated items at the time of loss.
Coverage for High-Value Insured Items
Yes, even cars, boats and other expensive items might have contents coverage. However, you might find that home coverage alone might not offer as much help as you would like.
For example, some policies will only pay a certain limit per item claimed. You might only be able to claim $2,000 on a motorboat worth $25,000. Not only that, but some homeowners policies will also not cover all contents at all times. For example, if a flood damages your possessions, you'll need a flood insurance policy to cover you. Home insurance likely won't.
You often have a couple of avenues to get around the limitations of possessions coverage.
- You might be able to add coverage riders or extensions to insure high-value items. For example, a rider might better cover that $25,000 motorboat.
- If you have separate insurance on certain items, you often should make a claim on those policies. For example, car insurance will often provide more help for a damaged car than contents coverage. That's why you have car insurance, after all.
Before expensive losses have a chance to happen in your garage, talk to a Jamison Group insurance agent. We can tell you what items have possessions coverage and we can also let you know which are better covered by their own coverage.
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