What Every History Buff Needs to Know About Home Insurance and Renovations for Their Historic Home

What Every History Buff Needs to Know About Home Insurance and Renovations for Their Historic Home

There’s something amazing about living in a little piece of history, but let’s face it. Keeping up with a historic home in today’s fast paced, what’s new/what’s hot/what’s now society isn’t as easy as it sounds. For example, do you have any idea how hard it can be to manage home insurance and renovations for houses over 100 years old? More importantly, do you know how to make it happen?

Buying home insurance for a historic home (usually) isn’t nearly as easy as buying insurance for the average digs in the suburbs. Why? For starters, putting a historic home together after it falls apart is a lot harder than rebuilding your average cookie cutter home. It’s harder to find materials, and finding masons and woodworkers capable of restoring the home to its original glory can be more painful than the average root canal.

As inspired by the migraine you’re going to have when you’re done unless you’ve got an inside line on this particular type of craftsman.

Then there’s the issue of the antiquities that call your house home. If you’ve redecorated to your personal tastes this might not be an issue, but if you own a home in a historic district that’s chock full of antiques it could cost you a small fortune to find similar replicas. Needless to say, most home insurance companies are going to drag their feet at the cost of rebuilding a home at $2,000,000+.

If you’re rebuilding or renovating a historic home you’re going to be required to bring your piping and electrical systems up to code.

And since the organizations that oversee properties in the historical districts tend to be pretty strict about using the exact materials to rebuild that the home was originally made from (sometimes from the same part of the country) you could be facing a costly and strategic nightmare. That’s why most historic home owners find it much easier to purchase a home insurance policy through an organization that specializes in insuring historic homes rather than a standard homeowners insurance provider.

Policies offered through specialized companies not only offer the higher liability limits your historical home needs, they also offer coverages you can’t find through standard home insurance. For example, protection from septic tank backups! (Kind of makes you wish you’d gone shopping for a historic home in the first place, doesn’t it?)

That doesn’t mean you can’t insure your home through your average, everyday home insurance company. If your home’s electrical and piping systems are up to code and the design is simple (for example, a farmhouse that’s more than 100 years old) you might be able to purchase a standard insurance policy. Cheap homeowners insurance for historic homes is virtually impossible to find, mostly because of the cost of labor and materials mentioned earlier. If you can find a standard home insurance policy that will give you the insurance coverage you need, go for it.

Any questions you have about insuring your historic home can be directed to the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

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