Evidence for Homeowner’s Claims
You’ve done your part and obtained homeowner’s insurance coverage or renter’s insurance. So if anything ever happens you’re taken care of, right? Well, not necessarily, especially when it comes to personal property issues or questions regarding the condition of your house prior to a fire, flood or other event. Especially if your house was completely devastated by a fire. 
While you may have coverage for personal property, it can become a monumental task to reconstruct all of your belongings. Maybe you have some documentation in a safe deposit box, or perhaps a retailer has information that you purchased that ring or television, but for the most part you will have to attempt to remember all of your property. At best, you may be able to remember half of what was actually lost. Think of all of the little items that you’ll forget. Maybe it’s something that was just worth a dollar, but there will be a lot of items worth a dollar, or five dollars that you will not get compensated for.
The solution? It’s easy. Videotape your house and everything in your house. I mean everything. Open drawers, open cabinets, open closets, go in the garage, leave nothing out of the video. It doesn’t have to be a masterpiece, just enough to help identify items and enough to help you itemize your property. So when you are videotaping, freely talk about what you are looking at, describe it, pick it up if necessary to get a better view. There may be some items that you want to take pictures of as well. If you own guns, they should ideally be in a fireproof safe or other safe location, and in addition to videotaping them, be sure to write down the serial numbers. If you have expensive jewelry, you may want to have it identified and appraised by a jeweler. I would suggest redoing the video every two to three years or when your personal property substantially changes.
All of the information must then be stored off site, at a relative’s house, your office etc. Not a lot of use in compiling all of this information and having it burn up in a fire. Also, as a side note, if you have important documents and/or photos on your home computer, get a back up drive and get that information backed up so it can be stored off site. Enduring a tragedy that takes your house is bad enough, don’t compound it by lack of preparation.
