Atlantic hurricane season runs from 1 June to 30 November, and in Louisiana that window is long enough that most households stop thinking about it somewhere around August. The problem with that is the part of your insurance that decides what a storm actually costs you is not the premium. It is three numbers on your declarations page, and almost nobody has read them.
This is a checklist rather than a sales pitch. Everything below applies to any Louisiana homeowners policy, whoever wrote it.
Start with three numbers on your declarations page
Find your declarations page — the summary sheet at the front of the policy, not the hundred pages of form language behind it. Three lines matter more than the rest put together.
1. The dwelling limit, called Coverage A
This is what the policy will pay to rebuild the structure. It is not what you paid for the house and it is not what the house would sell for. It is a construction cost, and after a widespread storm it is a construction cost in a market where every contractor in the parish is booked and materials have gone up. That effect has a name in the industry, demand surge, and it is the reason extended or guaranteed replacement cost endorsements exist. They add a cushion above the stated limit, typically 10 to 50 per cent depending on the carrier, for exactly this situation.
If your dwelling limit has not been reviewed since before 2020, it is very likely low. Construction costs moved a long way in that period.
2. The named-storm or hurricane deductible
This is the number that surprises people. Most Louisiana property policies now carry a separate deductible that applies only to damage from a named tropical system, and it is written as a percentage of the dwelling limit rather than a flat dollar figure. Two per cent and five per cent are both common.
Do the multiplication now, not in October:
- A home insured for $250,000 with a 2% named-storm deductible carries $5,000 of exposure before the carrier pays anything.
- The same home at 5% carries $12,500.
- A home insured for $400,000 at 5% carries $20,000.
Your all-other-perils deductible — the one that applies to a kitchen fire or a burst pipe — is usually a flat $1,000 or $2,500 and is a completely separate number. Two deductibles on one policy is normal. Knowing which one applies to which loss is the point.
3. How the roof is settled
Look for the words actual cash value or replacement cost against the roof. Replacement cost pays what it costs to put a new roof on. Actual cash value pays that minus depreciation for the age of the roof, which on a fifteen-year-old shingle roof can be most of the cheque. Some carriers apply a roof surfacing payment schedule that steps the settlement down year by year. None of this is hidden; it is on the policy, and it is worth knowing before you need it.
Wind and flood are two different policies
This is the single most expensive misunderstanding in Louisiana property insurance, and it comes up after every storm.
Your homeowners policy covers wind. If the roof lifts and rain comes through the opening, that is a wind claim. If a tree goes through a wall, that is a wind claim.
Your homeowners policy does not cover flood, which means rising water. Storm surge is flood. Water that comes across the yard and under the door is flood. No homeowners policy anywhere in the country covers it, and being outside a mapped high-risk flood zone does not change that. It only changes the price of the separate policy you need.
Flood coverage is written through the National Flood Insurance Program or through the private market, and a new NFIP policy normally carries a 30-day waiting period before it takes effect. That is deliberate, and it is why flood is a March decision rather than a storm-week one. Our flood insurance page goes through both markets.
The rest of the policy, briefly
A homeowners policy is built from lettered coverages, and after a storm you will hear all four named:
- Coverage A, dwelling. The house itself.
- Coverage B, other structures. The detached garage, the workshop, the fence, the pool surround. Normally a percentage of Coverage A, and normally too low on properties where the outbuildings have been added to over the years.
- Coverage C, personal property. The contents. Watch the category sub-limits: jewellery, guns, silverware and furs are each capped at a few thousand dollars in total unless they are scheduled individually.
- Coverage D, loss of use. Also called additional living expenses. This pays for somewhere to live while the house is uninhabitable, and after a widespread storm it is the coverage that runs out first, because everyone in the parish is competing for the same short-term rentals at the same time.
Before the season: the checklist
- Photograph everything. Walk the house room by room with your phone, open every closet and cabinet, and video the contents. Do the same outside, including the roof from ground level. Store it somewhere that is not in the house — cloud storage, or emailed to yourself.
- Save the declarations page off-site along with your policy number, your carrier's claims phone number and your agent's number.
- Check the dwelling limit against what it would cost to rebuild today, and ask whether extended replacement cost is available.
- Multiply out the named-storm deductible and decide whether you can actually absorb it. If not, ask what a lower percentage costs.
- Confirm you have flood coverage, or make the decision to buy it, remembering the 30-day wait.
- Ask about wind mitigation discounts. Louisiana requires insurers to offer premium reductions for construction features that reduce hurricane damage — roof-to-wall connections, opening protection, a fortified roof. If you have had qualifying work done, an inspection report can pay for itself quickly. The Louisiana Department of Insurance publishes the detail at ldi.la.gov.
- Trim what can become a projectile and know where the water shut-off is.
- Build the household plan. Louisiana's Governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness runs getagameplan.org, which covers evacuation routes, go-bags and the parish-level detail an insurance page cannot.
After a storm: the first week
- Make it safe, then make it dry. Emergency repairs to prevent further damage are your responsibility under the policy, and they are reimbursable. Tarp the roof, board the openings, keep every receipt.
- Do not throw anything away until it has been photographed and, ideally, seen by the adjuster. A pile at the kerb is very hard to prove.
- Report the claim early. Adjuster availability after a major storm is a queue, and the queue forms in the first forty-eight hours.
- Keep a log. Every call, every name, every date. It costs nothing and it settles arguments later.
- Read the settlement offer against the policy, not against what you hoped. If the two do not match, say so in writing.
The honest summary
Almost everything that goes wrong after a Louisiana hurricane was decided months earlier, on a page nobody read: a dwelling limit set in 2019, a five per cent deductible nobody multiplied out, a roof settled at actual cash value, and no flood policy because the house is not in a flood zone.
None of those are hard to fix in March. All of them are impossible to fix in September.
If you want a second set of eyes on the declarations page, our home insurance page explains what we look at, and you can request a quote or ask us to review the policy you already hold. Sometimes the honest answer is that it is fine as written.