Updated August 3, 2026. Quick answer: run this once a year and once after any change of ownership, address or mortgage status. It is ordered so that the items that lose the most money come first — which is not the order most people check them in.
1. Is the dwelling limit a current rebuild cost?
Not market value, not purchase price. If the limit has renewed unchanged for several years while construction costs moved, you are underinsured now. This is the single most common and most expensive gap, and it opens silently.
2. Replacement cost or actual cash value — and what about the roof?
Check the structure and the roof separately. Policies are commonly written so an ageing roof settles at actual cash value even when the rest of the house is at replacement cost, and on a roof claim that is most of the money.
3. What are all the deductibles?
Plural deliberately. There is often a separate percentage deductible for wind, hail or hurricane, calculated on the dwelling limit rather than the claim — which can make it many times the standard deductible. Know the actual dollar figure before a storm, not after.
4. Do you have flood cover, and when did you buy it?
It was never included in the homeowners policy, and a new policy normally takes 30 days. The exceptions are narrow, and the mortgage exception disappears when the mortgage does.
5. Are the liability limits high enough for the umbrella to attach?
An umbrella requires stated minimum underlying limits. If home or auto limits were reduced to save premium, you may have opened a gap you fill personally before the umbrella responds.
6. Does the deed match the policy?
Trust, LLC, life estate, transfer-on-death deed, a child added to the title — any of these changes the owner. The policy does not follow automatically, and the umbrella does not inherit the fix.
7. Is collision still worth carrying on each vehicle?
Compare the premium to actual cash value minus the deductible. Then put part of any saving into liability, which is where the ruinous numbers are.
8. What would you actually do if the claim were denied?
A public adjuster works for you rather than the insurer, and many states cap what they may charge — several imposing a lower cap during a declared emergency, which is exactly when you would be hiring one.
9. Do you know what is NOT coming to help?
- Federal disaster aid is capped per household per disaster and aimed at habitability, not rebuilding. What FEMA actually pays.
- The tax code no longer absorbs uninsured losses unless they come from a federally declared disaster — and that limitation was made permanent in July 2025.
10. Where are the documents?
Declarations pages, endorsements, the flood policy, the umbrella, and a photographic inventory of contents — stored somewhere that survives the loss and that someone other than you can reach. An inventory that burns with the house proves nothing, and contents claims are settled on documentation.
This checklist points at policy features that are commonly written a particular way. Insurance is regulated at state level, insurers file variations, and your declarations page and endorsements control in every case.
General information drawn from the Internal Revenue Code, IRS publications, FEMA and NFIP materials and state statute, not legal, tax, financial or insurance advice. Insurance is regulated at STATE level and policy wording controls – your own policy, its endorsements and its exclusions decide what is covered, and no page can tell you what yours says. FEMA and NFIP figures change and every figure here is year-labelled with its source named. We are not an insurer, an agent, a broker or a public adjuster, and we sell nothing on these pages.
Before comparing what you carry against what you need, it is worth knowing the floor your state actually sets — the statutory minimums, read from the vehicle codes.
One more policy belongs in this audit, and it is the one nobody re-reads: if you own permanent life insurance, request an in-force illustration. It is free, and it shows what the policy will do from here rather than what it was projected to do at sale.