Yikes! I have a cake business in a separate building from my home that is covered by my homeowners policy. I called State Farm about getting liability coverage for the business. They told me that the building is not covered by my homeowners policy if I have a business in it. Wow if I had a fire eveything would be gone.

You guys that run businesses out of your home should check and make sure you are covered!

Jenn123

glas you posted this b/c I'm suppose to call my ins. company this week to find out about getting coverage for my home business!! we will have the same situation as you....a seperate building 'attached' to the house!!

so do you have to get seperate ins for the business part?? or your home ins. isn't any good AT ALL since you now run a business out of it??

I was told the building was not covered at all by homeowners if a business was being run from it. He gave me a quote to cover the building, liability, business equipment, loss of income and medical payments. I don't know how this works if it is attached to your house. It may just be my insurance company. I'd love to hear how other people are coping with this.

My kitchen is in my attached garage. I have a separate policy to cover it. It costs $500 a year, with $2 million liability coverage. (Hartford)

JoAnnB,
YOu have what I want. . .a separate kitchen in my garage. Would you mind pm'ing me and give me some details on how you are set-up.
TIA,
Leslie
[email protected]

Each state will have different guidlines on their coverages. I work for State Farm in SC. Here, if your business is IN your home, you only need coverage on the business equipment/merchandise you have in the home. The home itself will be covered under your homeowner policy. If the building is a separate structure, you need a commercial policy on that building, so the structure and contents are covered, as well as your liability, loss of income, etc. There are SO many different options and endorsements on these policies, I can't begin to go over them all (and don't know them all either, that's why I have an underwriter!) I would suggest contacting your personal insurance agent and ask them about business coverage in your state. Some insurance companies won't even write home businesses. If that's the case with your company, you may have to go elsewhere for that policy. In our office, we have several company names/numbers that can help policy holders obtain coverage that we're not able to write, so ask your agent for that as well (if they can't write it, might be a little awkward otherwise). Also it's a good idea to keep a running inventory. A rough guestimate will be fine, but if there were a fire and you lost everything you own, you need to be able to tell an adjuster what you had. Take pictures, video, whatever and keep it either off-premises or in a fire-proof safe for security. It will help jog your memory if nothing else, because lets face it, the last thing you want to do if you just lost everything you owned is trying to remember how many spatula's and star tips, etc you had! It usually doesn't get THAT detailed, but you get the point.

HTH

Great info MsTonyasCakes! It didn't even occur to me that some of you are insurance agents...duh. THANKS

We found out that if we had a separate kitchen, but it was still attached to our house in some way, that we had to get a separate commercial policy on it. If there were a fire or some other disaster that originated in the working kitchen that damaged the home structure, the homeowner's policy would not cover it...the commercial policy would be responsible for any damage occuring to both the working kitchen and the home structure if something like that happened. If we don't have a separate policy on the working kitchen and it's attached to the house, if there were a fire or something, the homeowner's policy still would not cover anything if there was damage to the house itself. So we opted to put the kitchen in a detached building that we're putting on another part of our property away from the house. It's main purpose is to house our landscaping business and all of the equipment that comes along with it....but we'd planned for an office area and a bathroom as well...so we just went ahead and carved out a space in it for a kitchen for me. We have to get a commercial policy on it anyway, so it's a 2 birds with 1 stone type of thing.