Navigating insurance for first-time buyers and renters

Looking to rent or buy a home can be overwhelming before thinking of all of the additional odds and ends that come with moving into a new place.

For renters, one low-cost with a potentially high reward might be investing in renters’ insurance. Renters’ insurance is required in some rental situations, but not all, and can provide insurance coverage for items. Some insurance policies may also cover costs related to displacement from covered weather events, such as fire.

“I think sometimes you just don’t know what you don’t know — there are a lot of tenants out there who don’t even know that renters’ insurance is an option for them. I don’t think they realize how affordable it is,” said Cloverdale-based State Farm agent Erica Bishop.

“I think the other assumption is that it just covers my stuff — which it does, there’s personal property insurance in your renters insurance — and then in addition to that, there’s something called ‘loss of use’ which can help give a tenant some coverage if they find themselves in a situation where the home they were living in is now uninhabitable because of a covered loss,” Bishop continued. “Every renters’ insurance policy reads a little bit differently, but essentially they would have coverage in place to help pay for a place for them to stay until they find their next permanent location.”

For prospective homeowners, Bishop said that one thing someone can do is to bring their insurance agent into the picture early on in the home-buying process.

“When they’re out there and they’re working with their real estate agent, they should also be working with a trusted insurance agent,” she said. “When they’re placing an offer on a home or even before they do, they can call their insurance agent to see if (the house is) even eligible based on wildfire guidelines.”

Bishop said that mapping is updated every so often to determine how risky parcels in the county are when it comes to wildfire susceptibility. Insurance policy eligibility based on wildfire risk can also change depending on the insurance provider. — Zoë Strickland

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It may be beneficial to loop your insurance agent into the home-buying process early on.

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