Is your Carport or Garage covered?
Its important to know how your home insurance policy covers your carport, garage, or storage shed. Its also important to understand how your home insurance policy covers structures if they are attached or detached to your home. Here’s a quick break down of how that works.
If you look on your home insurance policy, you will notice there is the main coverage for your Dwelling, which is your main house, then right below that should be the Other Structures coverage. This coverage is typically 10% of what you Dwelling coverage is listed above it. This coverage can very easily be adjusted if you think you need more than 10% of the dwelling amount.
Attached vs. Detached
If you have a carport or garage, it can either be attached to your home or detached from your home. This is very important to understand in regard to your home policy, because this will determine if your carport or garage would be covered under you dwelling coverage amount or the other structures amount. If the carport or garage touches your home directly, which can just be the corner of the roof, then that garage or carport would be covered under the dwelling amount if there were a claim. This is very important to understand. Lets say you have a really nice 3 car garage that does not touch your home. If that garage was valued at $40,000 to build, and your home coverage is $200,000, then you need to make sure your other structures coverage is increased to 20% of the dwelling amount to make sure you have the garage properly insured.
Basically, the other structures coverage applies to any structure that does not touch your main home. If you have a nice garage, a carport, a storage shed, or even another secondary dwelling on the same property, the other structures coverage is what would be used to pay for a claim on those structures. If you do have a secondary dwelling on your property with your main dwelling, there may be other types of policies you may want to consider to make sure its covered properly. Make sure to ask your agent in those instances. When you get a chance, if you have structures on your property, get your policy out and make sure you have the right other structures coverage. If you’re not sure, please feel free to reach out to us for assistance.