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When Buying a Vacant Home Insurance Policy, There are Big Differences in What the Market Offers.

The most important thing about vacant home insurance is simply understanding when the coverage is needed. Almost no one understands this issue, and when they lose coverage under the existing homeowners insurance policy because no one is living in the house, only then do they seek other coverage. Potentially hundreds of thousands of dwellings are not insured at all right now, or not insured properly because they are temporially empty or vacant. Assuming insureds actually understand when they need to purchase a vacant home insurance policy, what can they expect from the marketplace?

The problem is, insurance offerings are not as standardized as regular homeowners insurance and coverage can be described as "all over the place." Most quotes for vacant home insurance is what is called a dwelling policy, offering coverage on just 8 or 9 named perils with the most common being: fire, hail, wind, lightning, aircraft, automobile, explosion, and smoke. Many policies will not include vandalism in their basic vacant home insurance offering, and the "peril" of vandalims needs to be added back into the policy at an additional charge.

All-risk coverage on a vacant dwelling can be found, but it's very uncommon. All-risk coverage is superior to "named perils insurance" because instead of a vacant homeowners insurance policy covering 8 or 9 things, these policies cover everything that is not specifically excluded by the policy document. The best example here is a claim filed in the rare event of a meteorite hitting the vacant house. "Meteorite" is never a named peril like "fire" for example in a dwelling policy, so an owner would be left with absoltely no coverage if a meteorite struck the house. However, if the owner held an all-risk vacant home insurance policy, the full rebuild cost would be paid because meteorite is not an exclusion under an all-risk policy. These policies don't cover for 8 things, they potentially cover for 80 things, or 800 things; whatever happens that is not excluded. This is far better coverage.

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