How to Keep Home Insurance Up to Date

How to Keep Home Insurance Up to Date
I'm Romie Brown. On behalf of Expert Village, I'm here to discuss with you tips and tidbits on how to buy homeowner's insurance. In this clip, we're going to talk about keeping your insurance up to date. In previous clips, we discussed, getting your insurance, meeting the right agent/getting the right agent, getting the right company, keeping everything insured, making sure you have everything properly covered. Now we're going to talk about keeping your insurance up to date. As you've been in the house for one, two, three years, you accumulate more stuff. You might do some new things, like finish a basement, add on a new wing, put up a new garage of some sort. Make sure you keep your insurance agent informed of these changes and these additions to your home as your coverage may need to change to accommodate those things. A common mistake most people do is make changes to their home, or beautify their home or do something added to their home, and don't alert their insurance agent. And then when they have a loss, it's hard for the insurance agent to substantiate, or to prove that it did these things, because he or she was not made aware of those things. It's very important to make sure that your agent is aware of those things. And it might be a simple, "Hey, I did some things to the house. Could you come by and take a few pictures?" The agent would love to come by, take a few pictures, add them to your file to make sure that you are properly insured. And to alert you of things and say, "You know what? I think we might need a little bit more coverage on that garage now, since you went from a one car to a two car garage." Or in the case, if you went from a garage that is attached to the house to another detached structure on your property. Because some homeowner's policies don't cover that unless it is listed. Again, it is very important to keep your insurance up to date. I'll recommend at least every eighteen months to visit with your insurance professional to go over things to make sure that your insurance is up to date.