Four Insurance Steps Every Arizona Homeowner Should Take Before Wildfire Season

Four Insurance Steps Every Arizona Homeowner Should Take Before Wildfire Season

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The recent wildfires near Sedona and Flagstaff are another reminder that wildfire season is a reality for many Arizona homeowners. Most preparedness articles focus on clearing brush, creating defensible space, and preparing an evacuation plan. Those are all important, but after nearly two decades representing homeowners in property insurance claims, I’ve learned there is another side of wildfire preparedness that is often overlooked: preparing your insurance claim before you ever need one.

Once a home has been destroyed, there is no opportunity to go back and gather receipts, photograph contents, or locate important documents. The homeowners who have taken a few hours to organize these items before a loss almost always have a smoother claims process than those trying to reconstruct everything from memory.

Here are four insurance-related steps I recommend every homeowner consider before wildfire season:

1. Create a Photographic Inventory of Your Home

Walk through your home with your phone and photograph everything. Don’t just photograph each room. Open cabinets, drawers, closets, pantries, storage rooms, garages, workshops, and attics. Take wide shots and close-up photographs.

After a total loss, insurance companies ask homeowners to prepare a detailed inventory of their personal property. That can mean documenting hundreds or even thousands of individual items while you’re also trying to rebuild your life.

Photographs won’t eliminate the need for an inventory, but they provide an invaluable reminder of what was actually in your home and where it was located.

Store those photographs somewhere other than your home, such as a secure cloud storage account.

2. Review Your Insurance Coverage and Preserve Important Documents

Many homeowners only look at their insurance policy after disaster strikes. That’s the worst time to discover you have questions about your coverage.

Review your declarations page each year and make sure the coverage limits still make sense for your home. Remember, your dwelling limit is not based on what you owe on your mortgage or what your home would sell for. It is intended to reflect what it would cost to rebuild your home with materials of like kind and quality.

While you’re reviewing your policy, create digital copies of your declarations page, the complete insurance policy, endorsements, remodeling invoices, appraisals, surveys, and—if you have them—your home’s original building plans.

One of the most valuable documents we receive during a large loss is a complete set of building plans. They eliminate questions about the home’s footprint, room dimensions, ceiling heights, built-in features, and many of the custom details that may no longer exist after a fire. If you’ve completed major renovations, keep records of those improvements as well.

3. Keep Better Documentation for High-Value Items

In my experience, most disagreements during a personal property claim don’t involve everyday household items. They usually involve items that are unique, custom, collectible, or unusually valuable.

Fine jewelry, artwork, firearms, wine collections, luxury watches, musical instruments, designer furniture, and other specialty items often require additional documentation to establish their value.

If you’ve invested in these types of items, don’t rely solely on your memory. Save receipts when possible, retain appraisals, photograph identifying features or serial numbers, and consider taking close-up photographs that clearly show labels, manufacturers, or other unique characteristics.

For example, a photograph of a wine cellar tells part of the story. Photographs that clearly capture bottle labels, vintages, and producers can provide much more meaningful documentation should you ever need to substantiate a claim. The same principle applies to custom furniture, artwork, or other one-of-a-kind items. The more information you preserve before a loss, the easier it becomes to demonstrate exactly what was there.

4. Understand Your Policy Before You Need It

One of the most common statements I hear after a wildfire is, “I didn’t know my policy worked that way.“

Insurance policies are complicated documents, but understanding a few key provisions before disaster strikes can make a tremendous difference. Know whether your home is insured on a replacement cost basis, understand your personal property limits, review your additional living expense coverage, and ask your insurance professional about endorsements that may provide additional protection or that reduce your coverage.

A thirty-minute conversation with your agent each year before a fire is almost always more valuable than trying to interpret policy language after your home has been destroyed.

Final Thoughts

Wildfires are an unfortunate reality throughout Arizona, particularly in communities surrounded by forests and open land. While no one can predict when the next fire will occur, every homeowner can take steps today that may make the insurance recovery process significantly easier tomorrow.

At Skipton & Associates, Inc. dba Skipton Claims Management, we’ve represented homeowners and businesses through some of the most complex fire and wildfire insurance claims in the western United States. One lesson remains remarkably consistent: the policyholders who prepare before a loss are almost always in a better position than those who don’t.

Preparing your insurance information won’t prevent a wildfire, but it can help protect one of your most valuable assets if disaster strikes.

If you’re dealing with an insurance claim and facing the loss draft process, we’re here to help. Whether it’s your home or your business, you don’t have to face the system alone.

8710 E Vista Bonita Dr,
Scottsdale, AZ 85255
(602) 957-8800
www.skiptoninc.com