Owning a house is the best way you can protect your property. Protecting property from any unfortunate event is to secure it with a standard homeowners insurance policy. This gives you peace of mind about everything that you have inside your home. This includes your personal belongings and structures within and other unattached units within the premises. And also damages any person on your property may experience. You need the storage unit. Insurance coverage. So, does your home insurance cover storage units?
In a lot of policies, insurance providers cover repairs and replacements for items such as jewelry. In the case of theft, fire, or flood, it is good to know that insurance can mostly replace them.
Now, what if you have your belongings stowed away from your house? Is there any liability coverage for property storage?
Long-term or short-term, many people these days choose to keep some of the things they own in a storage unit. You could rent it at a reasonable price. This fast-growing industry of storage facilities earns millions in keeping your property safe. There are so many reasons why someone would need to do this. Among them would be relocation, displacement due to natural disasters, death of someone in the family. Or even storing seasonal items, going through a divorce, or just for extra storage. When it comes to storage units, this is whether your home insurance policy will cover it or not. And, of course, whether you should get yourself one.
What Does Home Insurance Cover, and Does it also Cover Storage Units?
Personal property coverage covers your own belongings inside and outside your house. The very basic insurance would compensate for any expense. This is due to damaged or stolen items to the maximum of the limit offered by your policy. Some policies even cover your personal belongings even when you are traveling. Some would include even your hotel stays. And also cover your belongings from unavoidable circumstances like fire damage, storm, theft, and even lightning.
If you look at home insurance policies, they normally cover items like your furniture and clothes. Also, kitchen appliances such as microwave ovens. This also includes home entertainment systems such as televisions, carpets, and other similar items, bikes, and gardening equipment. And for some, even your plants. Please note that not all policies are the same. And there may be a different mix of items depending on the provider. Most of the time, an electrical failure that causes damage to your gadgets or computers isn’t part of the basic insurance policy.
The Necessity of Storage Unit Insurance
So does home insurance cover storage units? If not, then what do you do? When it comes to your off-property storage, it is not immune to natural disasters, and no one is looking at it on guard 24-7 for you. That is why you may need to consider securing your property with storage unit insurance.
How much does Storage Unit Insurance Coverage Cost?
Some home insurance policies could afford them the same coverage as your provider gives your dwelling but with a normal lower limit than your primary property, which is usually based on a percentage from the coverage amount of your home. If you find that this isn’t enough, you may opt to increase the insurance coverage of your primary property, which is your home, meaning that your insurance premium is going to increase as well. Some of the limits that your home insurance policy may offer could be off-premises coverage, theft-only, and high-value item limits.
Why do you need to Obtain Insurance for your Storage Unit?
To put it simply, you need to protect what is inside that facility and an insurance policy will help you need when it comes to repairing or replacing your property in case it obtains damages while in safekeeping.
Let us thank statistics for quantifying the amount of destruction that storage units succumb to. Mostly, arson and the people responsible are hardly caught and can afford to pay the damages. For this reason, you may want to rethink securing your belongings. While video surveillance is of great assistance, the probability of recovering items that people steal is slim. This is why storage units are never out of mind, even if they are out of sight.
What is covered?
Storage facilities offer insurance for the items in their facility to give their customers coverage in cases of theft or damage. In most cases, storage unit facilities would insist on their customers acquiring some type of insurance whether from them or a third-party provider that they are most often affiliated with if you don’t have your own coverage. There is a limit, of course, to the amount of coverage, and we compute the premiums on a monthly basis. When it comes to these facilities, insurance policies often come with their own guidelines and exceptions and the rates are normally higher than the basic property insurance policies. Also, these policies often reimburse the cash value of the property at the time of its loss and not the replacement value. This may not be enough to replace it at times.
These policies often cover theft, fire, and wind – including hurricanes and tornadoes, water damage, other natural disasters like hail and lightning damage, and smoke. They may exclude flooding, molds and mildew, earthquakes, war, and damage by vermin and other insects. Motor vehicles are generally not covered because it is expected that you have motor vehicle insurance that is separate. Expensive items or high-value items like jewelry and collectibles, cash, deeds, and the like are covered differently and also excluded from policies offered by storage facilities.
Protection for Your Items in Storage Facilities
No matter how secure some facilities are, they are still not immune from incidents that can permanently destroy your belongings. Insurance comes in as the help you need to reimburse the things you lost, whether to natural causes or man-made. While there are many things that can be replaced, there are also some that are truly irreplaceable.
A good piece of advice is to make sure that you have a few extra measures when it comes to security and chooses a good facility that is right for you. Exceptional storage facilities are hard to find but they are there. You need to look into customer reviews and research whether or not the facility was able to resolve cases, if there were any. One reason for this is that some companies may put into a paper that they are not to be blamed for anything, and if you aren’t looking at the contract you are signing well, you could be in for a surprise and non-reimbursement of the items you lost.
More Information about Protection for Your Items in Storage Facilities
You could also look into the amount of security that the facility has in order to protect the storage units in their protection. The number of surveillance matters in this case and it is also good to consider the extra protection they give with the kinds of locks used in each unit. You can also observe and ask about ease of access when it comes to getting into the facility.
Look into water and moisture protection, too, especially if your unit is in a low area. Consider higher areas to protect from naturally caused damages like flooding or high humidity, which is very conducive to mold growth.
Are there fire protection systems in place in the facility that you have chosen, and would they allow unit owners to store highly flammable items inside? Keep a list of all the things you store and keep your access codes, if there are any, only for yourself.
Does renters insurance cover my personal belongings in a storage unit?
Nothing is without risk, including that of storing your valuables in storage facilities. Remember that your home insurance policy’s coverage is much higher than the policy that storage facilities could offer. When it comes to the limits of your policy, stretching this would mean raising the limit of your property coverage. Also, your belongings could be replaced by the insurance but there are circumstances that cannot be avoided, which means that if something is of high value to you, you may want to rethink storing it in a facility and storing it somewhere else.
We are here to give you a hand!
We hope you learned a lot about does home insurance cover storage units. That’s a bit tedious, yes. Rest assured that we can answer your questions regarding your property insurance coverage. Just give us a call here at Team AIS in Denver, CO, and let our team be your insurance advantage!