Personal Property Limitations

Limited Coverage for Certain Property

The typical homeowners policy offers plenty of coverage for personal property, usually offering a limit equal to half of the amount reserved for the residence (ex. Your home is covered for $150,000, so your contents and furnishings are covered for $75,000). While this is generous coverage, it doesn't extend to all types of property for all causes of loss. Certain types of property, because of it's high value and liquidity, is far more vulnerable to loss either easily destroyed, easily stolen or both. For instance, an insurer protects your sofa right along with your fur coat for the same basic premium, but the two types of property don't represent the same chance of loss. Recognizing this fact, insurers put more restrictions on the coverage provided by a basic policy.

Theft Coverage Limitations

When property is lost due to theft, coverage under a standard homeowner policy is severely limited (generally between $1,000 - $2,500) for the following types of property:

• jewelry, watches, furs, and gemstones
• fine china, serving sets, trophies, and similar property made of or plated with silver, gold, platinum, or pewter
• for firearms, accessories, and related property

Other Coverage Limitations

Several categories of property are subject to very modest limits (generally between $200 - $2,500) of coverage, regardless of the cause of loss (theft, fire, accidental breakage, etc). Specifically:

• money, bank notes, coins, medals, gold, silver and platinum (other than jewelry or dinnerware)
• securities, accounts, deeds, tickets, stamps, manuscripts, passports and similar property
• watercraft and related property including their trailers
• trailers not used with watercraft
• business property located in your residence
• business property located away from your residence
• certain types of electronic property (CD players, VCRs, TVs, radios, computers )and related accessories) which is lost or damaged while in a car or is located away from your home and used for business.

Remind Me About Homeowners Limitations

The typical homeowners policy contains substantial coverage limitations for certain types of property. The modest insurance protection affects property that is highly vulnerable to loss because it is targeted for theft and/or has a high level of value in relation to it's size. Examples are gold, money/securities, precious metal-plated dinnerware, jewelry, furs, stamps, electronic property, business property, watercraft and firearms.

Scheduled Personal Property Endorsement - this form is used for increasing coverage for property that has protection reduced for all sources of loss. The property is removed from the basic policy's limits and is covered exclusively by the endorsement. On this form, each item of property has to be listed and assigned a particular value.

Inland Marine Property Floater - this is a separate policy used when covering substantial amount of high valued property.  In order to qualify for such coverage, you may need to meet special circumstances such as having a residential alarm system or make use of vault storage.

Another Advantage Of Special Handling - Often your property must be appraised in order to arrange coverage under a schedule or an inland marine policy. It's very helpful to have an expert source establish the current value of jewelry, furs or other valuable possessions. In fact, such property should be appraised every two or three years since their values often increase over time.