the home inventory guide
How to build a home inventory that holds up in a claim.
Most home inventories fail the one moment they exist for. This is what separates a list that gets you fully paid from one an adjuster discounts — what to include, how to value it, and why the proof has to predate the loss.
What a home inventory actually is
A home inventory is a documented list of what you own — each item with a description, a value, and, ideally, photo evidence. Its one job is to answer the question an insurer asks after a loss: prove what you had, and what it was worth. A list in your head doesn't survive a fire; a spreadsheet you never finished doesn't either.
Why the claim, not the list, is the point
Most people who suffer a total loss under-claim by thousands — not because they were underinsured, but because no one can recall the full contents of a home from memory, on a deadline, while displaced. The inventory exists so that memory test never happens. Everything below is in service of a claim you can actually file.
What to include (and what people forget)
Big-ticket items are easy to remember; the gap is the long tail — kitchen contents, clothing, linens, tools, the garage, everything in closets and drawers. Those add up to a large share of a real contents claim and are exactly what gets left off a manual list. A video walkthrough captures them because it captures the room, not just the item you thought to photograph.
How to value items honestly
Two numbers matter: replacement cost (what it costs to buy new today) and actual cash value (replacement cost minus depreciation). Policies pay one or the other, and the difference is large for anything a few years old. A defensible inventory shows a depreciation-adjusted current value per item — not one lump sum an adjuster can discount as a guess.
Why timestamped proof changes the conversation
The hardest thing to prove about a stolen or destroyed item is that you owned it, and its condition. Photo evidence captured and timestamped before the loss settles both — it predates the claim, so it can't be reconstructed after the fact. That's the difference between an adjuster taking your word and an adjuster looking at dated evidence.
Find your coverage gap before you need it
The most useful thing an inventory tells you isn't the list — it's whether your scanned total is under your policy limit. Discovering you're underinsured during a claim is too late; discovering it now means you can still raise a limit, add a rider for a valuable, or buy flood coverage before the season.