Calculators › Home, Auto & Renters
Estimate how much dwelling coverage your home needs from its size and local rebuilding cost, plus typical other-structures, belongings and loss-of-use amounts.
Homeowners insurance should cover what it would cost to rebuild your home — not what it would sell for, and not your mortgage balance. Rebuilding cost depends on size, local labor and materials, quality of construction and code upgrades. The other parts of a policy are usually set as percentages of the dwelling limit.
Dwelling = (Square feet × Rebuilding cost per sq ft × Quality adjustment + Extras) × (1 + Code & debris allowance). Other structures ≈ 10%, Personal property ≈ 50–70%, Loss of use ≈ 20% of dwelling.
A 2,200 sq ft standard home at $200 per sq ft is $440,000; with $25,000 of garage and deck and a 10% allowance for code upgrades and debris removal, the suggested dwelling coverage is $511,500. That gives about $51,150 for other structures, $255,750 for belongings at 50%, and $102,300 for loss of use.
Market value includes the land, which doesn’t burn, and reflects the local housing market rather than construction costs. Rebuilding cost can be well below or above market value.
Options that pay above the dwelling limit — often 20–50% more, or the full cost — if rebuilding costs more than expected, such as after a regional disaster. Worth asking about.
Every renewal, and after any renovation. Construction costs change, and many policies include an inflation adjustment that may not keep up.