Do You Have Enough Coverage to Rebuild Your Home?

Your top-rated Greensboro Home Insurance Agency remains dedicated to not only providing you with the best possible choices in obtaining comprehensive homeowners (HO) coverage but also to educating our policyholders regarding the intricacies of their HO insurance and also the importance of knowing exactly what their policy covers. You may already be aware that your homeowners insurance protects you from losses resulting from covered damages occurring to the structure of your home and its contents and you may even know what specific perils are covered and which are excluded, but there's more to know.

What you may not know is whether the coverage you're carrying is designed to rebuild your home to its pre-loss condition. According to the non-profit consumer advocacy group called United Policyholders, two-thirds of the homes in the U.S. are under-insured. According to this Forbes Magazine article, under-insuring their home is the #1 mistake homeowners make regarding their home insurance.

Are Your Policy Limits High Enough

You may have bought the minimum amount of homeowners insurance required by your mortgage lender, in which case your policy limits may have been just high enough to cover the amount of your mortgage at the time you purchased the home. Things may have changed since then and these changes should be considered when determining whether you're carrying enough coverage. Think about these factors:

• As your home appreciates in value, especially if you've remodeled, upgraded, added extensions, etc., your insurance limits should also be increased to reflect true value.
• Replacement cost coverage pays for repair or replacement using similar materials as were used originally. If a major disaster affects your entire area, labor and materials may be in high demand, causing excessive costs. Extended replacement or guaranteed coverage can be added to handle this.
• Earthquake and flood insurance are not parts of standard home insurance and must be purchased separately. Unless you've done this, you're not covered for these two perils.
• As building codes are routinely updated, damage to an older house may require additional costs, beyond policy limits, to bring the structure up to code. Adding an Ordinance or Law Endorsement will cover this need.
• Something called an Inflation Guard can be also be added to your policy which will automatically increase your policy limit to reflect current constructions costs in your area.

Speak to your trusted Greensboro Home Insurance agent to go over your policy to see if you're fully covered.

Greensboro Car Insurance: Insuring Young Drivers

If you're sitting at your computer and asking the Internet to find you a listing for Greensboro Car Insurance Agencies, don't be surprised to be faced with nearly three quarters of a million hits from a Google search. This may start looking like a little more work than you anticipated in your effort to find the best insurance company to insure your young driver!

You'll see one entry that promises a compilation of the 119 insurance agents located in Greensboro, North Carolina, and this starts to make the job of finding the best Greensboro Car Insurance agency to do business with seem a little bit easier. But what makes one insurance provider better than the others?

What Makes One Better Than Another?

It makes sense when seeking out an insurance agency that deserves your business to find one that has a proven record for providing:

1. The best coverage
2. The best rates
3. The best service

You want to deal with an agent who's highly educated in the industry and who wants to share that information with you so you understand all your various policy options and are able to make educated choices regarding the selection of the most appropriate policies for you and your family. When you need to contact your insurance agency you should be able to reach a licensed, professional agent rather than a customer service rep or someone hired to answer the phones.

Options For Your Young Driver

The first thing you'll notice when reviewing insurance quotes for young (up to age 25) or new drivers is that rates are considerably higher than what's available to older, more experienced drivers. The reason is simple – young and inexperienced drivers are more likely to file claims against their car insurance company because, for a variety of reasons, they're more likely to suffer a loss.

The first rule for buying car insurance is to get multiple quotes from various insurers and always compare similar coverage plans to get an accurate cost comparison. It's important to use every available means to save money on your insurance costs while still only dealing with insurers carrying nothing less than an "A"-rating. Consider these tips:

• Young drivers living at home can usually save money by being added to their parents' policy
• Drive a car that has low insurance costs
• Take advantage of every possible discount
• Keep a clean driving record
• Increase your deductible amount

Does My Home Insurance Cover My Home Business?

There are an ever-growing number of North Carolinians who have chosen to run businesses from their homes, whether this involves selling products around the community, working online or bringing work that's more conventionally done in an office setting into the home environment. While home-based businesses have proven to be a good source of extra income for those living here in the Greensboro area, all of those profits and more could conceivably be lost in the blink of an eye if some type of unfortunate incident were to occur and that home business was not previously covered by proper insurance protection.

Home Insurance Policy Coverage

In Greensboro home insurance agencies are fairly plentiful but only a select few have made it their mission to highly educate their policyholders as to exactly what their insurance does and does not cover. Homeowners insurance is typically built around three benefit areas:

• Protection against covered losses suffered to your home and other structures on your property
• Protection against covered losses suffered to your personal property and other contents located within your covered home structure(s)
• Protection against losses from liability charges, including both legal costs and judgments

What is unclear, however, without reading the terms of your specific homeowners (HO) policy, is what loss protection is afforded to your home-based business. This is because every homeowners policy can be unique in its particular coverage. Typically, however, it can be safely said that standard homeowners insurance will likely leave gaps in protection as it applies to your business, leaving you exposed in the event of losses in both business property and liability risks.

Additionally, even if you do have some coverage in these areas from your standard homeowners policy, this coverage is typically quite limited in the amount of coverage offered. Most standard HO policies limit losses on business property (on premises) to no more than $2500 and losses for business property off premises to $500. You can see that if a fire occurred in your home office and you lost your computer, copy machine, fax machine, office furniture, smart phone and more that your losses could easily exceed $2500.

Three Easy Fixes

There are three potential solutions to your home-based business insurance needs and you should consult your insurance agent to see which best suits your particular business:

1. An endorsement to your current homeowners policy
2. A separate in-home business policy
3. A dedicated business owners policy (BOP)