Personal Property Insurance | What is Personal Property Coverage?

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Your home’s personal property can include your:

Furniture
Clothing
Expensive handbags
Household appliances
Electronics
Decorations

This means personal property insurance pays to replace your items when kept inside and outside your home, and actually, anywhere in the world. It doesn’t cover your actual real estate, though.

What Is Personal Property Insurance?

Your personal property coverage is an essential part of your home insurance or renter’s insurance policy. This type of coverage can help keep your personal belongings protected against damage from a covered loss or theft.

The two basic personal property coverages are:

Actual cash value, which replaces your items based on what they’re worth now. This could be less than what it would cost to replace them, because the value of something like a sofa goes down over time.
Replacement cost coverage pays to purchase a new, similar item if your property is damaged or destroyed.

Replacement Cost Coverage for Your Belongings

You've worked hard for everything you have. We're here to help make sure it's protected.

home insurance personal property replacement cost

insurance personal property replacement cost

Replacement Cost Coverage can insure your everyday items, like:

Clothing
Furniture
Housewares
Appliances

If these are damaged or stolen, this coverage will help to replace them.

How Replacement Cost Coverage Works

We'll pay you for the total cost it takes to restore your belongings with new items of like kind and quality, whether someone gave it to you or you bought it.

So how does the reimbursement process work? We'll first pay you the actual cash value (ACV) of your damaged property, minus your deductible. You can use this to help start repair work or replace your item all together. Once you send us a receipt for your replaced property or a signed contract showing that repairs have started, we'll send you another payment to make up the gap between ACV and your total replacement cost. This is known as recoverable depreciation.

Some examples of replacement costs for your everyday belongings are:

Examples

ORIGINAL COST		REPLACEMENT COST

$40 when gifted to you 5 years ago		$200 at today's prices

$100 when given to you 4 years ago		$290 at today's prices

$1,500 when purchased 8 years ago		$2,800 at today's prices

$450 when purchased 10 years ago		$700 at today's prices

How Can You Get Coverage?

We offer replacement cost coverage on all our owner-occupied home, condo and renter’s policies.

Want to add this coverage to your current policy with The Hartford?

Great news! We automatically include Personal Property Replacement Cost Loss Settlement Coverage with every policy.** This ensures your personal property is protected.

Learn more:

Get a Quote Today

**Package name and availability may vary by state and plan offered.

What Does Personal Property Insurance Cover?

This coverage helps protect your tangible personal property, like your furniture. It doesn’t help cover your actual home.

For more expensive items like furs, silverware, china or crystal, you can insure them with valuable items blanket coverage. This can help increase your limit and give you an extra coverage amount for your most valuable items. For example, your homeowners insurance policy caps coverage for theft on jewelry at $1,500. But with valuable items blanket coverage, the limit can increase to $10,000 per item.

How Does Personal Property Coverage Work?

At the time of a loss, like a theft or fire, your personal property has a value that reflects it’s age and condition, known as its actual cash value. In other words, actual cash value is the depreciated value.

In contrast, replacement cost coverage reimburses you for the total cost of replacing your belongings, not just the actual cash value. This helps you buy a similar item of the same quality at today’s prices, whether you bought it or received it as a gift.

We will work with you to determine the value of the item that needs to be replaced. Once you’ve paid your deductible, we’ll reimburse you it’s actual cash value, which you can use towards buying your replacement. After you’ve bought the item and given us the receipt, we’ll help pay you the difference.

For damaged items, you’ll still need to pay your deductible and we’ll ask for proof that the repair is in progress or complete. Until then, we’ll pay the loss at its actual cash value.

How Much Personal Property Coverage Do I Need?

In most cases, your personal property coverage is a large part of your home insurance and is usually estimated as 70% of your dwelling coverage. However, you can always customize your coverage to the amount you think your belongings are worth.

To figure out the value of your personal property, start by walking around your home and estimating your big purchases. For instance, you’ll want to look at furniture, electronics and housewares.

To make it easier, group each type of personal property on your list. Then, take pictures and write down how much each item costs or its value. For items like clothing, you can create one total for all of it together. This video will walk you through exactly what to do.

Once you have everything tallied, round to the nearest whole number to determine the amount of coverage you need. From there, you can work with insurance companies to get the right policy for you.

Writing down your personal property in a home inventory will give you peace of mind, knowing that you’re prepared if an unexpected disaster happens.

Get Personal Property Coverage From The Hartford

Bundling your insurance coverages can help save you money. To learn more you can get a home insurance quote today.

We do all we can to help protect you and the things you own. On top of personal property insurance, you can bundle these coverages in your homeowners policy to protect you from loss:

To learn more about our products and services call us at 888-413-8970 and get an AARP^® Homeowners Insurance quote from The Hartford today.¹ We’ll go over any terms, conditions and coverage amounts for your policy.