Does Your Homeowner’s Insurance Policy Cover Fire Damage?

2/2/2022 (Permalink)

Is Fire Damage Covered by Your Homeowners Insurance Policy?

Recuperating from the loss associated with a home fire in Laguna Beach, CA, is hard enough on its own without trying to figure out what your homeowner’s insurance policy covers. While the fire restoration company will take care of repairing the damage to your home and restoring it to its original condition, it will be up to you to contact your insurance company to find out what’s covered. Here are the basics of what your home insurance will typically cover and what specific circumstances they won’t.

What Your Insurance Will Cover

Most common causes of a home fire are covered by a majority of insurance policies. Examples of scenarios where your home and personal belongings would be covered include:

• Cooking fires
  
• Accidental cigarette fires
  
• Fires caused by children or pets
  
• Electrical fires
  
• Lightning and storms

Basically, if the fire happened due to circumstances out of your control or because of an accident, you will almost always be covered.

What Your Insurance Doesn’t Cover

There are two main exceptions that a basic homeowners insurance policy won’t cover.

Arson

If you for whatever reason decided to set fire to your own home, insurance will understandably not cover the costs of the damage. You might wonder why someone would purposely destroy their home; often, this occurs because people want to collect the money insurance gives for the damages.

Vacant Home

A vacant home fire is another situation that your insurance will not cover. If no one has entered your home for 30 days straight, it is considered vacant. However, you can purchase an endorsement to your policy to cover a vacant home. This is useful if you have a vacation home or property you only visit occasionally.

Although certainly a stressful situation, is it reassuring to learn that a home fire is almost always covered by your insurance policy! Unless arson was involved or your home was vacant at the time of the fire, you can expect to receive some substantial compensation for the damage that occurred.