Valuing your household contents accurately

How much is your TV, smoothie blender, lounge rug, Guess jeans or that old family heirloom necklace really worth?

While a lot of it may have some nostalgic and/or sentimental value that can’t be quantified, most will have a monetary value that must be quantified.

Getting it all covered in your insurance policy can be a complicated task – one that all savvy South African homeowners (and home renters for that matter) should undertake.

For homeowners a home is the most expensive and valuable asset most of us will ever buy.

So it makes sense that we’d want to be covered in case something like the Cape fire or the Limpopo floods of 2014 passes by.

So the answer is obviously to go for home insurance.

Then it’ll all be fine, right?

Not quite.

Unless you’re a true minimalist, odds are you have quite a lot of things lying around the house that might not be all that valuable on their own, but add it all up and you may find that it would be difficult to replace your things if a burglar decides to run off with all of it loaded in the back of a bakkie.

What about renters?

The house may not belong to you but a lot, if not everything, in it does. Having a landlord comes with pros and cons.

One of the main pros is that you don’t necessarily need to worry about paying for things that break.

If the geyser bursts and floods the downstairs linen cupboard, the hardwood floors won’t be your concern and paying for a new geyser to be installed won’t come down on you. What about the linen, though?

Your landlord certainly won’t pay for it so you need to make sure that your household contents insurance policy is comprehensive enough to cover everything from linen destroyed by hot water to the TV mount failing and sending your plasma screen crashing to the ground.

So how do you know that everything is covered?

It’s difficult, but it’s doable.

A good place to begin is by keeping an inventory of everything you own. Some insurance brokers allow you to order a survey of all your household contents that can be covered under their home contents insurance policy (being property damaged or lost because of fire, theft, accidents, natural disasters such as storms and floods, water leaks, and the like). Having an inventory of your home contents will help you enormously in the event of any claim.

Here’s the rub: With most insurers it’s your responsibility to make sure that the sum insured is sufficient to replace all the contents of your house as new at current prices.

Your insurer may suggest a minimum sum insured based on the details you provide but if the figure they suggest is not sufficient you may want to suggest it be bumped up – keep in mind, though that’ will bump your premium up too, but in case of a claim, you won’t regret it.