Home contents insurance is pretty much a non-negotiable in this day and age. According to Statistics South Africa, more than one million incidents of housebreaking took place in South Africa during 2020/21. The only way to combat this is by investing in security features that protect your property and getting home contents insurance to help you cover the costs of a break-in, because ultimately, no security measure is foolproof.

Naturally, home contents insurance is also there for you in case of accidents, fire, and flood damage (of which there has recently been quite a bit in certain parts of the country).

Importantly, when it comes to getting this kind of insurance, it’s vital that you get the right amount of cover for your home. The trouble is, many of us end up making the mistake of providing our insurer’s with a rough calculation that includes a mix of most of the obvious items in our homes, like technology and furniture, as well as a few of the little things, like the linens. The figure we arrive at is the one we hand over.

However, it’s rather important that you determine the correct value of your home contents – and this is something that we can help you with.

Why is it necessary to be accurate at all?
Honestly, can’t you just look around and guess? It would certainly be a lot easier, but it’s actually very important to give an accurate value to your insurer.

The main reason for this is because the value you provide is the absolute maximum amount that your insurer would pay out if there was an incident, like a break-in or an accident. The consequence of giving a figure that’s too high is that you’ll pay much higher premiums than is necessary.

However, if you give a figure that’s too low, you’ll end up being underinsured. What happens in this case, is that if you put in a claim, your insurer might only pay out a percentage and you could end up replacing valuable items with something of lesser quality. Or in other words, if you’re underinsured and your 48” flatscreen is stolen, you could wind up having to replace it with something a lot smaller. And curved. With fewer pixels.

What should be included?
It’s easy enough to just tell you that ‘everything’ in your house must be accounted for and be done with it. But that’s hardly helpful.

It’s also not extremely helpful to tell someone to imagine that the roof of their home has been ripped off and the house has been tipped upside down – with everything falling out counting as their home contents. It’s a great visual representation to be sure, but we’re don’t think that this will help you with the practical task of calculating your home contents’ value.

Instead, we believe that the 5 tips below could help to ensure you leave nothing out and help you calculate the true value of your home contents.

1. Go room-to-room
   The best way to get the most accurate figure is to literally create an inventory of each room. This allows you to create a comprehensive list of the contents in each space, allowing you to methodically place an amount next to and achieve a total figure.
2. Leave nothing out
   It’s not just the obvious items, like the TV and couches, that you need to think about. It’s vital that you go from the bottom of the room and work your way up, listing everything in between.
3. Current replacement values
   If you have old items and can’t remember what these cost, then don’t guess the value. What you can do instead is put down the amount that the same or an equivalent item would cost today.
4. High-value items
   Get a valuation certificate for jewellery and antiques from a professional. Trust us, this will be necessary if you want to insure these items for their correct value.
5. Don’t forget outside
   It’s easy enough to forget about the things that you’ve put outside, like your garden furniture, gardening equipment, tools, expensive potted plants, and other outdoor items that you want covered by your insurer.

We trust that this information will help you create an accurate home contents inventory so that you can get the right level of home contents insurance and protect yourself from the enormous costs of having to put your home back together after something unfortunate happens.

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