Home Inventory & Why It’s Important

Having a home inventory is a “better safe than sorry” task that is important to tackle for several reasons. Having a home inventory will be a huge relief in emergency situations that require proof of ownership or involve insurance. Other unfortunate (but potentially inevitable) situations such as estate planning and divorce settlements will be much easier and less painful if a home inventory exists. Read on for more tips from our experts on everything you need to know about home inventories!

• Start small! Begin with one room at a time or one category at a time (such as electronics, furniture, etc.) This will prevent overwhelm.
• Take photos and video of your items; visual documentation adds credibility and avoids confusion.
• Include receipts or appraisals, especially for high-value items.
• Keep copies online in cloud storage, in an email and/or on a backup drive, as well as printed copies in a safe. Having multiple copies is best just in case something happens to one set.
• Update the inventory regularly to ensure you have the most accurate account of your belongings.

In case of a fire, theft, flood, or another natural disaster, a home inventory helps you quickly and accurately file insurance claims. An inventory provides you with a clear idea of what was lost and its monetary value. Having an inventory and documenting everything you own ensures that you have adequate insurance coverage and avoids you being underinsured. It is far easier to assess whether your homeowner’s or renter’s policy covers the full value of your belongings if you know, for certain, what the full value of those belongings is.

An inventory also serves as proof that you owned certain items. This is especially important if your items are stolen or destroyed – you’ll need proof of ownership to provide to the police, insurance company, or any other legal entity during legal disputes. Some losses might even be tax-deductible, and an inventory provides the needed documentation to file for those deductions.

Having documentation of everything will also speed up the recovery process. If you have a record of serial numbers and detailed descriptions, it can make tracking and recovering stolen items much easier for law enforcement.

You never want to plan for certain life circumstances (such as a divorce), but you will be happy you planned for it even if it wasn’t “Plan A”. In the case of an estate or divorce, having your belongings documented will be helpful in distributing assets. An inventory will help avoid confusion because it provides legal clarity on which items are to go to whom in a separation. It also ensures fair distribution for taxation purposes, as appraisers and legal professionals can use the inventory to assess the total value of an estate or shared assets.

Creating a home inventory ultimately provides you with something truly priceless: peace of mind. Knowing that you have documentation of your belongings will give you confidence and peace of mind, especially during an unforeseen emergency where it is needed. Being prepared will reduce stress in the event an emergency does happen, as you’ll have less to worry about in an already difficult time. If you have a home inventory, you won’t need to rely solely on your memory to list every item you owned, and this ensures nothing gets missed.