Homeowners Insurance

If it was not disclosed to your insurer at the time of finalizing your policy that you're running a business out of your home, it is within the company's right to void it. While you likely won't need a home daycare endorsement if you already have separate liability insurance, every potential home insurance company will want to know that your home is also a place of business.

Similar to how individual companies have different underwriting methods to determine rates, every insurer figures their replacement cost for a home differently. Some use tax records, mortgage info, average property values, and other data.

Vacant or unoccupied homes are still covered under many homeowners plans. You'll just want to specify that the home is vacant upfront as you search for a new plan.

Hopefully, you will not need to file a claim, but insurance will follow the effective date. If your policy takes effect January 1st, 2020, then that is the first date that a claim would be honored.

The best course of action would be to call that insurance company and request all paperwork associated with that claim. It should show as a zero dollar payout, which you could show to other companies to dispute the claim.

If you were not paid out, a canceled claim should not have an effect on your premium. Database systems used for cataloging claims history can sometimes confuse this, however.

Your insurance company is likely going to pay for debris removal. Removing certain things while doing so may come with additional cost and typically insurance is not going to allow that.

I would call my prior insurance company (your renters provider) showing the false claim and see how they have it marked. I would also have them send confirmation that the claim was dropped and not paid out.

O and L stands for Ordinance and Law. Though your agent said that it wouldn't cover code upgrades, perhaps he meant that if a code went into law, your insurance isn't going to accept claims to upgrade the home and bring it up to code — unless your home suffers a loss.

Thanks for your question. It sounds like you would want a standard HO-3 homeowners policy that would allow for short term rentals.