Reporting a house insurance claim 101

April 6, 2015 7:20 AM

While I was away, someone caused some minor damage to a corner of the house with their truck (chipped/cracked masonry, missing mortar, etc). My neighbour dealt with the initial incident, and I have the culprit's insurance details, and will be initiating a claim. Having not claimed on my house policy before, do I need to contact my insurance as well? Or do I just go through the insurance of the person who caused the damage? Thank you!
posted by carter to Home & Garden (3 answers total)

Best answer: If you want to rigorously follow your legal obligations, this is a question for your insurance contract. It is somewhat common for insurance contracts to require notification of significant damage to the house (mostly for the insurer to update the valuation of the house). Chipped masonry does not seem to fall in that category.

That said, I would not bother reporting it for two reasons:

1. There is no benefit from reporting since your home owner's insurance here has no liability. If you do report and for some reason they pay for the repair, they will simply pursue the liable party for the cost via subrogation and you will not end up anywhere different than if you hadn't reported it. However, on the other hand, the chance that your home owner's insurance provider will care that you didn't report it is infinitesimal (even if it is required by your policy).
2. Home owners insurance providers can and will cancel your policy for excessive claims. In some states, "excessive claims" can be a single claim. The chance that this report might end up in your insurance file as a negative item (for whatever reason) is, by itself, worth not reporting.

posted by saeculorum at 7:29 AM on April 6, 2015 [3 favorites]

Response by poster: Thank you, saeculorum. That seems pretty straightforward. The damage is relatively minor.
posted by carter at 8:49 AM on April 6, 2015

For auto claims, its usually a good idea to inform your insurance company, because then they take on the job of pestering the other company to pay out the claim and you do not have to do the negotiations yourself. I have never made a house insurance claim either, but I wonder if the same principle holds true. Is it less difficult to work directly with the other person's insurance when dealing with home insurance claims?
posted by cubby at 1:18 PM on April 6, 2015