Coverage for your home, your cars, your family.

A homeowners policy is four promises in one document: it rebuilds the structure, replaces the contents, defends you when someone is hurt on the property, and pays for somewhere to live while the work is done. Where Louisiana policies go wrong is almost never the first promise. It is the deductible structure underneath it.

Most policies written here now carry a separate, percentage-based named-storm or hurricane deductible: 2% or 5% of the dwelling limit rather than a flat $1,000. On a home insured for $350,000, a 5% named-storm deductible is $17,500 out of pocket before the carrier pays a dollar. That number is worth knowing before the storm, not after it.

• Replacement cost on the dwelling, priced against current Louisiana construction costs rather than market value
• Personal property, including the contents of a shed, barn or detached outbuilding
• Personal liability, and medical payments for a guest injured on the property
• Additional living expenses while the house is uninhabitable
• Scheduled items: jewelry, guns, silverware and furs, listed individually
• A separate named-storm or hurricane deductible, which we will read to you in plain numbers

Condo owners are covered by two documents working together: the master policy the association carries on the building, and your own HO-6 policy on everything inside your walls. The gap between them is where the argument happens after a loss.

Bare-walls master policies leave you responsible for cabinets, flooring, fixtures and built-ins. All-in master policies do not. We read the association’s declarations before setting your dwelling limit, and we add loss assessment coverage so that a special assessment levied on every unit owner after a hurricane does not land on you alone.

• Your own HO-6 policy on interior finishes, contents and liability
• The association master policy, read rather than assumed
• Loss assessment coverage for post-storm special assessments

The day a house stops being your residence and starts being a rental, the homeowners policy on it is the wrong form and may not respond at all. A dwelling fire policy, sometimes called a landlord policy, is what a leased residence needs.

It protects the structure and the other permanent buildings on the lot, and it carries liability for you as an owner rather than as an occupant. It also adds the coverage a homeowners form has no reason to include: fair rental value, which pays the rent you stop collecting while the property is being repaired.

• The dwelling and other permanent structures on the lot
• Landlord liability, which is a different exposure to occupant liability
• Fair rental value while the unit is uninhabitable
• Contents you own in the property, such as appliances

Letting the house, the camp or the garage apartment on AirBNB or VRBO is commercial use of a residence, and a homeowners policy typically excludes it outright. Louisiana sees a very specific version of this: houses that let for eleven months of the year and then fill at four times the rate for Festival International, Mardi Gras or a home game weekend.

Short-term rental coverage protects the property and, more importantly, the liability exposure. If a paying guest is injured on your stairs and sues, the liability section of a short-term rental policy is what answers. The homeowners policy underneath it will point at the business-pursuits exclusion and decline.

• Property damage caused by paying guests
• Liability when a paying guest is injured on the premises
• Lost rental income after a covered loss

Your landlord’s policy covers the building. It covers nothing of yours, and it does not defend you if a visitor is hurt inside the unit or if a fire that starts in your kitchen spreads to your neighbour’s. Renters insurance is the least expensive policy we write and the one most often skipped.

• Personal possessions, including electronics, furniture and clothing
• Liability protection and legal defense costs
• Additional living expenses if the unit becomes uninhabitable

Manufactured homes are rated and underwritten on their own forms, not as a variant of a site-built house. Tie-downs, anchoring, the age of the unit and whether it sits in a park or on land you own all move the price and, in a hard market, the availability.

We write rental, commercial, seasonal, and park or private-property units, and we place them with carriers who actually want the class rather than tolerate it.

• Replacement cost or actual cash value, depending on the unit and the carrier
• Personal property and liability
• Additional living expenses
• Scheduled items such as jewelry, guns, silverware and furs

No homeowners, renters, condo, landlord, mobile home or business policy in Louisiana covers rising water. Flood is always a separate policy, either through the federal National Flood Insurance Program or through the private market, and in a great many cases the private market now prices better.

Being outside a mapped high-risk zone is not the argument people think it is. A substantial share of NFIP claims come from properties outside the special flood hazard area, which is exactly the property whose owner was never required to carry it. In Acadiana, where a slow-moving rain event can put water in a house that has never flooded, an X-zone preferred risk policy is one of the cheapest pieces of protection on the list.

• NFIP and private market options, compared side by side
• Building and contents written separately, because they are separate limits
• Risk Rating 2.0 guidance, including what actually drives your price now
• The 30-day NFIP waiting period, which is why this is not a storm-week decision

A working property is a home, a business and a fleet at the same time, and splitting it across three unrelated policies is how gaps appear. A farm owners programme puts the dwelling, the barns and outbuildings, the equipment and the farm auto exposure on one set of declarations, with liability that contemplates livestock and machinery.

St. Landry Parish runs cane, rice, crawfish and cattle within a few miles of each other, and the equipment on those operations is worth more than the trucks that pull it. Scheduled equipment, written at real values, is where most of these accounts are won or lost.

• Farm owners policy covering the dwelling and farm structures
• Scheduled farm equipment and machinery
• Farm auto, including trucks and trailers used in the operation
• Farm liability, including livestock and visitor exposure

An umbrella sits on top of your auto, home and, where relevant, boat and landlord liability, and it takes over the moment those underlying limits are exhausted. It is the least expensive coverage per dollar of protection that we sell, and it is the one that decides whether a serious at-fault accident is an insurance event or a personal financial event.

The arithmetic is straightforward. If you carry $250,000 of auto liability and cause a collision that produces a $1.2 million judgment, the difference is not the carrier’s problem. A $1 million umbrella closes that gap for a premium most households would not notice, and it usually forces a useful conversation about whether the underlying limits were ever high enough.

• Liability above the limits on your auto, home, boat and landlord policies
• Legal defense costs, frequently outside the limit rather than inside it
• Required underlying limits, which we set up before the umbrella is written
• Coverage for household members, including teenage drivers