Moving house? Your homeowners policy does not move with you

The new home is priced on its own facts — roof age, construction, distance to fire protection, local perils — so even staying with your current carrier means a fresh quote, and treating it as one means comparing it like one. Start once you are under contract, two to three weeks before closing: the lender requires evidence of coverage before funding, and the policy should take effect on closing day. Buying with cash changes the requirement, not the logic — nobody should own a house uninsured overnight.

Keep the old policy in force for as long as you own the old home, and cancel it effective the day its sale closes — the unearned premium comes back to you, usually pro-rata. What catches sellers out is the gap in between: a house that sits empty while it is listed is not the house the policy was written on. Most policies restrict or suspend key coverages once a home has been vacant beyond roughly 30 to 60 days — theft and vandalism and water damage are the usual casualties — and an empty house is precisely where those losses happen.

The fix is a conversation, not a workaround: tell your insurer the house is vacant and ask about a vacancy endorsement or a vacant-home policy for the listing period. It costs something; discovering the exclusion at claim time costs the claim.

Your homeowners contents coverage generally follows your belongings off-premises, including in transit — though often with limits, and never for the breakage of things that were simply packed badly. What surprises people is how little the mover's default liability is worth: the basic "released value" protection on interstate moves is set by federal rule at 60 cents per pound. A fifty-pound television is worth thirty dollars under that math.

For a move with real value on the truck, the options are the mover's full-value protection, checking exactly how your own policy treats goods in transit, or both — and jewellery, documents, and anything irreplaceable rides in your own car, not the truck.

Here is the part that saves money: your auto policy re-rates when your address changes anyway, and your homeowners policy is being quoted fresh regardless. With both policies in motion, the bundle comparison costs no extra effort at exactly the moment new-home credits are on the table. Movers who re-shop everything at once routinely land better combined rates than either policy would have found alone — the work was already sunk into the move.