WHAT is your stuff worth?
WHAT is your stuff worth? That is a question the Insurance Information Institute, a Manhattan industry group, thinks everyone who has homeowner’s or renter’s insurance needs to answer.
"No home is immune from a potential catastrophe,” said Jeanne M. Salvatore, a senior vice president and spokeswoman for the institute. “That’s why a home inventory is so important.”
Robert Owens, president of the Owens Group, an insurance agency in Englewood Cliffs, N.J., said people needed to be realistic about the replacement value of their personal property.
Mr. Owens said people tended to undervalue their property. “Do a mini-inventory,” he said. “Look in your closets and try to figure out what it would really cost to replace all those suits and dresses.”
The best way to keep track of the value of your possessions, Mr. Owens said, is to keep copies of receipts in a location other than your home. “But you have to be pretty compulsive to make copies of every receipt and then store them in a secondary location,” he conceded.
Another way to get an accurate idea of what you have would be to go from closet to closet, room to room, and take digital pictures.
Mark L. Schussel, vice president and public relations manager for the Chubb Group of Insurance Companies in Warren, N.J., said it was important to take pictures of furniture, furnishings and even architectural improvements to the home.
A short list would include old or exotic moldings, columns, bannisters and other woodwork or plasterwork; fireplace mantels; unusual windows (like stained glass and skylights;) expensive chandeliers; built-in bookcases; billiard tables; bathroom counters and cabinetry; home theaters; wine cellars; and bars. (It is also wise to have things like antiques, artwork, rugs and expensive musical instruments appraised periodically.)
Michael H. Spain, owner of the Spain Agency in Mahopac, N.Y., said most homeowners’ policies provided “contents coverage” for 50 to 70 percent of the insured value of the home. “So there is usually plenty of coverage, as long as you can prove your loss,” he said.
For co-op, condo and rental policies, however, policyholders must determine how much insurance they need for their contents. “So you have to be accurate,” Mr. Spain said. “And everyone should insist they are insured for replacement cost coverage.”
But what do you do with all these pictures and records?
Experts recommend that such information be kept somewhere other than the home — at a relative’s house, at the office or in a safe-deposit box, for instance. The Insurance Information Institute, however, has made that easier and taken it one step further.
The institute’s free “Know Your Stuff — Home Inventory Software” (knowyourstuff.org) makes it possible to store records of your stuff by burning them onto a CD or printing out a room-by-room document that can be stored off the premises.
The latest version of the software offers an optional service known as Vault 24, which keeps your inventory list online. A basic account — at vault24.com — costs about $15 a year.
From the New York Times
