However, if policyholders prefer to itemize their personal property losses, they should create spreadsheets of those losses, which can be divided into categories like clothing, electronics, and furniture, and use pictures and any receipts that they can access to support their loss estimates, the panelists said. The panelists recommend that policyholders creating such lists visualize each room, look at old pictures, and talk to friends to create an accounting of all their destroyed belongings, but warn that it can be a triggering process.
Panelists also noted that policies have different time limits on the number of months a policyholder can take to rebuild or repair a damaged home. Policies also may have different provisions determining whether the insurer will reimburse a policyholder for destroyed personal property based on their actual cash value, which could be subject to depreciation, or replacement value. Anyone submitting claims should be aware of those terms and ask a representative for clarity if a provision is unclear, they said.
