Gathering information about West Virginia Home Insurance is a necessity for the new homeowner in Charleston or Huntington, and a good idea even if you have owned your home for a considerable period and are simply looking to see whether or not you can get a better deal on your home insurance.
When you first purchase a property you may simply have gone with the insurance that was recommended by your mortgage company, perhaps under the mistaken belief that it was the very best policy available, or simply because you had a lot of other matters on your mind at the time, and were happy to go with the flow. However, after you have had time to settle in and review all the policy documentation again, then often it becomes clear that your current policy is not ideal, and that a change of West Virginia Home Insurance Cover could provide better value for money and better overall coverage.
One thing to bear in mind with the insurance policies that most mortgage companies recommend to their clients is that they will almost always be optimized around the potential loss of the building, rather than taking proper account of your possessions.
This makes sense, because any loan that you have with the company is secured on the property itself, rather than your possessions, so whilst they may still be covered to some extent that is not the primary concern of your mortgage company.
Whilst clearly you do want a policy that properly covers your physical home (and outbuildings like sheds and garages). You also want a policy that is streamlined to cover the possessions that you may have spent a lifetime building up. And to make sure of that you really need to dig down into considerably more detail into any West Virginia Home Insurance Policies that you are considering purchasing (or have already purchased), and read the small print of exactly what is and is not covered.
Here for example are some common exclusion’s from most home policies:
1/ Water damage caused by flooding
2/ Loss of Pets e.g. Budgie flies away, dog gets lost etc. are not covered.
3/ Water damage to sewers
4/ Damages resulting from neglect, power failures, nuclear hazard, earth movement and war
5/ Cost of repairs because local laws or building codes have changed.
6/ Overflow of a body of water
7/ Surface water
Water damage is a big deal for most insurers because it can cause immense amounts of devastation and cause thousands of dollars of damage very quickly, and hence is virtually never covered.
To cover yourself properly against flooding you will need to take out some specialized Flood Insurance.
Earth movement is another area that many homes can potentially suffer from, because subsidence can be a real issue in many areas, and you won’t be covered.
In this regard prevention is often the best line of defense, and so make sure that your building survey is up to scratch before progressing with any property purchase.
More interesting perhaps then the exclusions are the areas where cover is very limited and so you will often need to pay out extra premiums to increase your West Virginia Home Insurance Cover.
The biggest example of this is probably ‘Valuables’ cover, which is where many items such as antiques, fur coats, money, stamp collections and even computer equipment are marked as ‘Valuables’ in the policy documentation and are immediately only covered for up to $1000 in total.
If you do a home inventory of your possessions then you will often find that you have many items that are classed as ‘Valuables’ which have a value considerably in excess of $1000, and so you should immediately seek to get your valuables cover increased, as at the moment they simply aren’t properly covered.
The best plan is to read your existing policy document through carefully and make a realistic assessment of where it would be preferable to increase cover, and then take a look at several competing companies’ offerings to see what is available.
If your current company can offer you as good a deal then you simply need to arrange the increased cover. But if not it can often be beneficial to move to a different company that offers a better product.
What is the Average Cost of West Virginia Home Insurance?
The US Government has statistics available showing what the average costs of insurance are across the whole country.
The average cost of home insurance in West Virginia is $638 a year, which is lower than the national average of $791.
Depending on where you live, your own personal circumstances, zip code and crime rates in your neighborhood then this may vary greatly. So get a number of West Virginia Home Insurance Quotes and see if you can find a better deal right away.
