Key takeaways
- Coverage A is the dwelling limit, and B, C and D are commonly percentages of it — so an error in A quietly propagates through the policy.
- A percentage deductible is a percentage of your dwelling limit, not of your claim. NAIC defines it against "total Coverage A amount".
- Look for more than one deductible. The second is usually attached to wind, hail or named storms, and is usually the larger one.
- Check the lienholder line. Wrong or missing mortgagee details are a common route into force-placed insurance.
- Endorsements listed on the page change the policy — and some of them remove coverage rather than adding it.
Looking at your declarations page and not sure what you are seeing? A licensed agent can read it with you.
Call [PENDING][PENDING]. Calls are answered by [PENDING], a licensed insurance agency (NPN [PENDING]). HomeCoverDesk is not affiliated with any insurer. Calls may be recorded or monitored for quality and training purposes. Our partner does not offer every insurer or every product available in your state.What the declarations page is
It is the summary sheet at the front of your policy, and it is the only part of the document most people ever read. It is also the part that is specific to you: the rest of the policy is standard wording, and the declarations page is where your names, your limits, your deductibles and your endorsements are written in.
California's insurance department lists what it contains: “the full legal name of your insurance company, your name and address, the policy number, effective and expiration dates, premium payable, the limits of insurance, covered property, deductibles, and any applicable lienholder information”.
That list is short, and every item on it is load-bearing.
| Letter | What it is | How the limit is usually set |
|---|---|---|
| A — Dwelling | “Major property coverage that protects your house and attached structures if it is damaged by a covered peril” | The number you choose. Every other limit below is derived from it, which is why getting it wrong propagates through the whole policy |
| B — Other structures | “Protections to other structures on the residence premises that are not attached to the dwelling” — detached garage, fence, shed | “Coverage B is normally limited to 10% of the coverage A limit.” CDI adds that “you may purchase more coverage for an additional premium” — it is a default with an upgrade available, not a cap |
| C — Personal property | “The contents of your home and other personal belongings owned by you and other family members who live with you” | Commonly set as a percentage of Coverage A. Wisconsin's regulator gives 50% as the standard relationship. And the limit is not the whole story — CDI's very next sentence, which we had never carried, is “Coverage is limited on certain types of property that are especially susceptible to loss, such as:” followed by a list. So the Coverage C limit is not the whole answer — particular categories of property carry their own, much lower sub-limits. We quote the lead-in through its colon because that is where the sentence stops, and we are not going to tell you which categories CDI lists, because we have not been able to read that list — the conversion of this guide drops it, and characterising a list we have not read is how the errors on this site have generally started. Look at your own policy's Special Limits Of Liability section: that is where yours is, and it governs you regardless of what California's guide says |
| D — Loss of use | Additional living expenses where a covered peril means “you cannot live in your home” | “Coverage D is normally limited to 20 percent of Coverage A.” |
| E — Personal liability | Responds when a resident is legally responsible for injury to others; includes the cost of defending you | A flat limit you choose, not a percentage of anything |
| F — Medical payments to others | “Reasonable medical expenses for persons accidentally injured on your property” | A small flat limit, per person |
The six letters
Coverage A through F. The lettering is industry-standard, so once you know it you can read any insurer's page, and it is worth knowing that five of the six limits are usually derived from the first one. Coverage A is the dwelling limit; B, C and D are commonly set as percentages of it.
Which is why an error in Coverage A is not one error. Under-insure the dwelling and you have quietly under-insured the detached garage, the contents and the cost of living somewhere else while the house is rebuilt.
| On the page | Why it is there |
|---|---|
| The full legal name of your insurance company | Not the brand on the letterhead. This is the entity you have a contract with, and the one whose financial strength and license status you would check |
| Your name and address | The named insured. If the person on the deed is not the named insured, that is worth resolving before a claim, not during one |
| The policy number | What every later conversation, complaint and claim is indexed by |
| Effective and expiration dates | The expiration date is the one to diary. Non-renewal notice periods run backwards from it |
| The premium payable | What you are paying, before any mid-term change |
| The limits of insurance | The six numbers above |
| Covered property | The described location, and what counts as part of it |
| Deductibles | Note the plural. There is very often more than one, and the second is usually the expensive one — see below |
| Any applicable lienholder information | Your mortgage servicer, listed as mortgagee. If this is wrong or missing, the servicer may not receive proof of coverage — which is how force-placed insurance starts |
Not sure whether your deductible is a flat amount or a percentage? A licensed agent can tell you what you are actually carrying.
Call [PENDING][PENDING]. Calls are answered by [PENDING], a licensed insurance agency (NPN [PENDING]). HomeCoverDesk is not affiliated with any insurer. Calls may be recorded or monitored for quality and training purposes. Our partner does not offer every insurer or every product available in your state.The line almost everyone reads wrong
If you take one thing from this page, take this.
A percentage deductible is a percentage of your dwelling limit. It is not a percentage of your claim. NAIC's reporting definition for regulators puts it as “a specified maximum percentage of the homeowners policy's total Coverage A amount the insured must pay toward any claim against the policy”.
Read casually, a 2% deductible sounds like a small share of whatever goes wrong. As an example: against a $400,000 dwelling limit it is $8,000 — and it is $8,000 whether the loss is $9,000 or $300,000. On a $12,000 roof claim, to take another example, it is two-thirds of the claim.
Percentage deductibles are usually attached to a specific peril rather than to the whole policy: wind, hail, hurricane, named storm, earthquake. So a page can show a comfortable $1,000 deductible on the first line and a percentage deductible on the second that applies to the exact thing most likely to damage the house. Both numbers are on your page. Multiply the second one out before you need it.
| Type | The definition | What it means on your page |
|---|---|---|
| Fixed-dollar deductible | “A maximum fixed dollar amount the insured must pay toward any claim against the homeowners insurance policy” | The number most people picture. It does not change with the size of the loss or the size of your dwelling limit |
| Percentage deductible | “A specified maximum percentage of the homeowners policy's total Coverage A amount the insured must pay toward any claim against the policy” | A percentage of your dwelling limit, not of your claim. This is the single most misread line on a declarations page. As an example, 2% against a $400,000 dwelling limit is $8,000, whatever the loss turns out to be |
| Why it is usually the second one that bites | Percentage deductibles are typically attached to a named peril — wind, hail, hurricane, named storm, earthquake | So the ordinary deductible on the first line may be modest while the one that applies to the peril most likely to damage your house is many times larger |
Where the mechanics are set by statute
Nineteen states and the District of Columbia have some form of hurricane or named-storm deductible in place, as of June 2025 — that is NAIC's own count, on NAIC's own topic page, and it names all nineteen: Alabama, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia. Until 26 August 2026 this page said ‘a few prescribe them’ and hedged that we had not surveyed all fifty states. We did not need to survey anything; the regulators' own association had published the figure. If you live in one of those twenty jurisdictions, the mechanics below are not a curiosity from another state.
Florida's are the ones quoted here because its statute makes the moving parts visible in a way most do not — but the deductible on your own declarations page is set by your state's law and your insurer's filing, and reading Florida's will not tell you what yours says.
Three of them are counter-intuitive. The hurricane deductible switches off 72 hours after the last watch or warning is terminated for any part of Florida — not for your county. It applies on a calendar-year basis rather than per storm, so a second hurricane in the same year with the same insurer does not generally mean paying the full deductible twice — though note that the statute says, at subsection (5)(a)3, that the insurer may apply the greater-of amount rather than that it must. And the $500 option that appears in every summary of this statute is one an insurer need not offer where the dwelling limit is $250,000 or more — which at current values is most Florida homes. Every one of those figures is published in section 627.701 itself. That is one of four bands the statute draws, and until 26 August 2026 this page named only that one; the table below has the rest, including the $100,000–$250,000 band where the swap is bought with a promise not to non-renew.
Whether anything similar applies to you is a question for your own declarations page and your own state's insurance department.
| Question | What the statute says |
|---|---|
| What choices must an insurer offer? | Section 627.701(3)(a), quoted with both ends restored on 26 August 2026: “Except as otherwise provided in this subsection, prior to issuing a personal lines residential property insurance policy, the insurer must offer alternative deductible amounts applicable to hurricane losses equal to $500, 2 percent, 5 percent, and 10 percent of the policy dwelling limits, unless the specific percentage deductible is less than $500.” We had been quoting only the middle. The opening words scope the duty to the moment of ISSUE; the closing proviso switches an option off where the percentage would come to under $500 — which on a small dwelling limit is the 2 percent option |
| Is the $500 option always available? | No, and there are FOUR bands, not one. We named one until 26 August 2026. At $250,000 or more (627.701(3)(d)1) the insurer “need not offer the $500 hurricane deductible” but must offer the others — so on most Florida homes at current values the percentage options are what you are choosing between. Between $100,000 and $250,000 (3)(c) the insurer may substitute “up to a 2 percent hurricane deductible” for the $500 one — but only in a policy “that the insurer guarantees it will not nonrenew for reasons of reducing hurricane loss for one renewal period”. Read that as a trade: you give up the $500 option and get a renewal guarantee. Between $1m and $3m (3)(d)2 a 3 percent deductible may replace the 2 percent. At $3m and above (3)(d)3 the 2 percent option may be withheld too |
| When does it switch on? | Section 627.4025(2)(c): “at the time a hurricane warning is issued for any part of Florida by the National Hurricane Center”. A warning, not a watch |
| When does it switch off? | The same section: “72 hours following the termination of the last hurricane watch or hurricane warning issued for any part of Florida by the National Hurricane Center” — note any part, not your part |
| How often do you pay it? | Section 627.701(5)(a)1, with the clause we had been cutting: it “shall apply on an annual basis to all covered hurricane losses that occur during the calendar year for losses that are covered under one or more policies issued by the same insurer or an insurer in the same insurer group”. That clause is the difference between ‘annual’ and ‘annual, if you stay put’: switch carriers mid-season and the aggregation does not follow you, so a second storm can mean a second full deductible |
| What about a second hurricane in the same year? | A ceiling, not a setting — and we stated it as a rule. Section 627.701(5)(a)3 says the insurer “may apply a deductible to a subsequent hurricane which is the greater of the remaining amount of the hurricane deductible or the amount of the deductible that applies to perils other than a hurricane”. The drafting makes the permission deliberate: every neighboring provision says ‘shall’ and this one alone says ‘may’. It is the most the insurer is allowed to charge you, not the amount it must |
| Does another deductible stack on top? | For a hurricane claim: Florida's Department of Financial Services states it on its own consumer page — “When a hurricane deductible is applied, no other deductible under the policy may be applied.” Corrected 26 August 2026: this row also carried the ROOF deductible's anti-stacking sentence from 627.701(10)(a), which cannot operate on a hurricane claim at all. Section 627.701(10)(a)5.b excludes “A roof loss resulting from a hurricane as defined in s. 627.4025(2)(c)” from the roof deductible outright, along with a total loss, a tree-fall puncture, and a repair of less than half the roof. The roof deductible is a non-hurricane mechanism and it had no business in a hurricane table. How multiple deductibles interact on your policy is a question for your policy |
What to check while you have it open
We are not licensed to advise you and we have not seen your policy. These are the checks the definitions above make possible, and most of them take under a minute.
| Check | What you are looking for |
|---|---|
| Is Coverage A a rebuild figure? | It should reflect labor and materials to rebuild, not what the house would sell for. See our page on setting that number |
| Is there more than one deductible? | Look for a separate wind, hail, hurricane, named storm or earthquake line |
| Is any deductible a percentage? | If so, multiply it by Coverage A and look at the result. That is the number you would have to find |
| Does the policy say replacement cost or actual cash value? | And check whether the roof is treated differently from the rest of the building |
| Is ordinance or law coverage listed? | Without it, an insurer “may not pay for changes you may need to make to the structure of your home to bring it up to current building codes” |
| Is the mortgagee right? | Wrong or missing lienholder details are a common route into force-placed insurance |
| Are the named insureds right? | Everyone on the deed who should be covered, spelled as they are on the deed |
| What endorsements are listed? | Endorsements change the policy. An unfamiliar form number is worth asking about — some of them remove coverage rather than add it |
Corrections to this page (14)
We publish these rather than editing quietly. Our corrections policy explains how we handle errors.
- — Our Florida table quoted § 627.701(3)(a) from its middle, dropping the opening words that scope the duty (“Except as otherwise provided in this subsection, prior to issuing a personal lines residential property insurance policy”) and the closing proviso (“unless the specific percentage deductible is less than $500”). Both ends change who the rule reaches and when an option disappears.
- — We answered “is the $500 option always available?” from § 627.701(3)(d)1 alone. There are four bands, not one. Between $100,000 and $250,000 an insurer may substitute “up to a 2 percent” deductible — but only in a policy it guarantees not to nonrenew to reduce hurricane loss for one renewal period, a condition we never mentioned. Between $1m and $3m a 3 percent deductible may replace the 2 percent. At $3m and above the 2 percent option may be withheld.
- — We quoted § 627.701(5)(a)1 without its limiting clause: the annual aggregation applies “for losses that are covered under one or more policies issued by the same insurer or an insurer in the same insurer group”. That is the difference between annual and annual-if-you-stay-put, and a reader who switched carriers mid-season could face a second full deductible we had told them they would not.
- — We stated the second-hurricane calculation as a rule. Section 627.701(5)(a)3 says the insurer “may apply” the greater of the two amounts — a ceiling, not a setting. Every neighboring subparagraph says “shall”; this one alone says “may”.
- — We printed the roof deductible's anti-stacking sentence inside our hurricane-deductible table, where it can never operate. Section 627.701(10)(a)5.b excludes “A roof loss resulting from a hurricane as defined in s. 627.4025(2)(c)” from the roof deductible entirely. The roof deductible is a non-hurricane mechanism and it has been moved out of that table.
- — We said a few states prescribe wind or named-storm deductibles by statute and hedged that we had not surveyed all fifty. NAIC publishes the count on its own topic page and did throughout: “As of June 2025, nineteen states and the District of Columbia have some form of hurricane or named storm deductible in place” — and it names all nineteen. The hedge read as rigor over a search nobody had run.
- — Our table of what a declarations page shows was captioned “what the page itself must show” and sourced to California's consumer guide. That guide prescribes nothing: the sentence is a GLOSSARY entry for the term “Declarations” and begins “Usually the first page of an insurance policy that contains…”. What a declarations page must show is set by your state's law. The guide also has no entry reading “Declarations Page”, the term we had attributed to it.
- — Our Coverage C definition stopped before the sentence that follows it in California's guide: “Coverage is limited on certain types of property that are especially susceptible to loss, such as:” and a list. Particular categories of property carry sub-limits well below the Coverage C limit, and we had left that limit looking like the whole answer. We do not name the categories CDI lists, because the conversion of that guide drops the list and we have not read it.
- — Our registry entry for California's building-code sentence began at “may not pay”, dropping both the condition and the subject. In full it reads “Unless your policy has this coverage, your insurance company may not pay for changes you may need to make to the structure of your home to bring it up to current building codes.” Cut where we cut it, it reads as a statement that insurers never pay for code upgrades rather than that they may not if you lack the endorsement.
- — Correcting the correction above. The sentence is real and it is the department's own wording. Florida's Department of Financial Services prints it twice on its hurricane-deductible page, both times inside a “Please note” block — the opening callout under the page heading, and the one under “When does the hurricane deductible apply?”. Our original attribution of the sentence was correct; having just found genuine misattributions in the same table, we assumed this was another and retracted it without going back to the department's page. The quotation is restored. Our count was then wrong too: this notice said three times and placed one in the introduction and one in the answer to “How is the hurricane deductible applied to my policy?”. It is in neither. A retraction is a published claim and needs the same proof as the thing it retracts — and so does the correction of a retraction.
- — We cited that proviso to section 627.701(3)(a). As published in the statute it is section 627.701(3)(d)1. We had also cut the sentence at “the $500 hurricane deductible” and closed it with a period, which turned a conditional clause into a flat rule — the statute goes on to require the insurer to offer the other hurricane deductibles. Both are fixed and the full sentence is now quoted.
- — We quoted, in the Florida Department of Financial Services' voice, “When a hurricane deductible is applied, no other deductible under the policy may be applied.” We stated that the sentence did not exist and that it was Fla. Stat. 627.701(10)(a) — the roof-deductible rule — with the subject changed. That retraction was wrong, and is itself corrected below.
- — We omitted a proviso published in the statute on the $500 hurricane deductible: an insurer need not offer it where the dwelling limit is $250,000 or more, which is most Florida homes. The Florida table is now quoted from the statute throughout.
- — We rendered California's “Coverage B is normally limited to 10%… However, you may purchase more coverage” as “limited to 10% unless you pay additional premium”, turning an option into a condition.
Methodology and sources
The coverage definitions and the contents of the declarations page are quoted from the California Department of Insurance's Residential Insurance: Homeowners and Renters guide, revised May 2024. The standard percentage relationships are that guide's for Coverage B and D, and the Wisconsin Office of the Commissioner of Insurance's Consumer's Guide to Homeowners Insurance, revision 07/2026, for Coverage C. We quote regulators rather than insurers because the coverage letters are industry-standard while any individual policy's wording is not.
The deductible definitions are from NAIC's Definitions for State Regulator Homeowners Market Data Call 2026. That document is a set of reporting definitions for insurers filing data to regulators rather than a consumer guide or a description of policy wording, and we say so rather than letting it borrow authority it does not have. We quote it because the phrase that matters — that the percentage is of the total Coverage A amount — is exactly the part that gets lost in paraphrase.
The hurricane deductible mechanics are quoted from Florida Statutes sections 627.701 and 627.4025, 2026 Florida Statutes, and are labeled as Florida's throughout. Corrected 26 August 2026: this paragraph used to say that most states leave these deductibles to the insurer's rate filing, and that we had not surveyed all fifty and were offering a general impression rather than a finding. That hedge was doing work it had not earned. NAIC publishes the count on its own topic page — nineteen states and the District of Columbia, as of June 2025, enumerated by name — and it was there the whole time. An honest hedge over a search nobody ran reads as rigor and is not, which is the same failure recorded on our aerial-imagery page, where “we could find no state” wrapped an inadequate search and left Louisiana readers believing they had no protection they in fact held.
Correction, 23 August 2026. This page first published with the Florida table attributed to the Florida Department of Financial Services' consumer guide. Four of its five quotations were statutory text, which that guide words differently. The table also omitted the proviso published in section 627.701(3)(d)1: an insurer need not offer the $500 hurricane deductible where the dwelling limit is $250,000 or more, which is most Florida homes. Everything in that table is now quoted from the statute and verified against it. Quotation marks are a promise that the words are someone else's exactly, and we broke that promise.
Every percentage on this page is stated with what it is a percentage of. That is not pedantry: a figure with the wrong unit is a wrong figure, and the percentage deductible is the clearest example in home insurance of a number that means something very different from what it appears to mean. Nothing here is advice about your own policy. If you find an error, our corrections policy explains how we handle it.
Frequently asked questions
What does Coverage A actually cover?
California's insurance department describes it as major property coverage protecting your house and attached structures against a covered peril. It is the building, not the land underneath it and not your belongings inside it. It is also the number most of the other limits on the page are calculated from, which is why it is the one worth getting right.
Why is my wind deductible so much bigger than my other deductible?
Because it is probably a percentage rather than a fixed amount, and the percentage is applied to your dwelling limit rather than to the claim. NAIC defines a percentage deductible as a specified maximum percentage of the policy's total Coverage A amount. Multiply the percentage by your Coverage A figure and you have the actual number you would need to find before the insurer pays anything on a wind loss.
Is 10% of Coverage A really the limit on my detached garage?
That is the common default. California's guide says Coverage B is normally limited to 10 percent of the Coverage A limit, and that you may purchase more coverage for an additional premium — so it is usually adjustable, but only if someone asks. It is worth checking against what the structure would actually cost to rebuild, particularly for a detached garage, a workshop or a long run of fencing.
What is ordinance or law coverage and do I have it?
It pays for bringing the structure up to current building codes during a repair or rebuild, which standard coverage may not do. California's department puts it directly: unless your policy has this coverage, your insurer may not pay for changes needed to bring your home up to current codes. On an older house that gap can be substantial. Whether you have it should be visible on the declarations page or in the endorsement list.
The mortgage company is listed wrong. Does it matter?
Yes, and it is worth fixing promptly. The lienholder line is how proof of coverage reaches your mortgage servicer. If the servicer does not receive it, it may conclude you are uninsured and buy a policy itself — force-placed insurance, which costs far more than the policy you already have and protects the lender rather than you.
What are the endorsements listed at the bottom?
Endorsements are amendments to the standard policy wording, identified by form number. Some add coverage, some restrict it, and the page usually shows only the number rather than the effect. If a form number is unfamiliar, asking what it does is a reasonable question and the answer is sometimes surprising — roof-payment schedules and water-damage limitations both commonly arrive this way.