How to read your insurance declarations page

Your declarations page — most people just call it the "dec page" — is the cover sheet of your homeowner policy. It is the most important single page in the file, and most homeowners have never read it carefully. We sit at kitchen tables with people every week and walk through it line by line. Here is the same walkthrough, in writing.

Pull up your policy in another tab if you can. The dec page is usually the first or second page. Search your email for "declarations"if you cannot find it.

The four coverage letters: A, B, C, D

Every standard homeowner policy splits coverage into lettered buckets. Roof claims live in Coverage A. The others matter when storm damage spreads beyond the roof.

Coverage A — Dwelling. The structure of your house: roof, walls, framing, decking, attached siding, attached gutters, the foundation. This is the dollar number that should approximately equal the cost to rebuild your house from the dirt up. Not the market value and not the tax assessment — the rebuild cost.

Coverage B — Other structures. Detached items: a separate garage, a shed, a fence, a freestanding pergola. Usually set at 10% of Coverage A. If a storm takes out a fence and a garage, this is the bucket.

Coverage C — Personal property. Your stuff. Furniture, clothes, dishes, electronics. Usually 50% to 70% of Coverage A. This only matters in a storm claim if water gets inside and ruins belongings, or if a tree comes through and damages contents.

Coverage D — Loss of use. Hotel and food costs if your house becomes unlivable during repairs. Usually 20% of Coverage A. Rare for a roof-only claim, but it kicks in when interior damage forces you out for a week.

Deductible: not always the dollar amount you think

Find the line that says Deductible. Read it twice. In the post-2010 NC market, most carriers split this into two:

• A flat All Other Perils (AOP) deductible — typically $1,000 to $2,500. This applies to a kitchen fire, a burst pipe, a tree limb in non-storm wind.
• A separate Wind/Hail deductible, usually written as a percentage of Coverage A: 1%, 2%, or even 5% on coastal policies. This is the deductible that applies to roof claims after a hail or wind event.

On a $400,000 dwelling with a 2% wind/hail deductible, you owe $8,000 out of pocket before the carrier pays anything on a hail claim. We meet plenty of homeowners who thought they had a flat $1,000 deductible across the board, and the percentage line buried on page one is a real surprise.

If your wind/hail deductible is more than 2%, that is worth a conversation with your agent at next renewal — particularly if your roof is more than 12 years old.

Replacement cost vs actual cash value

Look for the loss-settlement clause. It is usually a small block of text near the bottom of the dec page or referenced as "HO-3" or "HO-5". Two terms matter.

Replacement Cost Value (RCV) is what it costs today to put a new roof on your house — labor, materials, dump fees, permits, all of it. This is the "like for like" number.

Actual Cash Value (ACV) is RCV minus depreciation. Depreciation is the carrier's estimate of how much your roof has worn out, based on its age relative to its expected life. A 12-year-old architectural shingle, expected to last 25 years, is depreciated about 48%.

On a roof claim, your dec page tells you which of these settlements applies. Look for one of these phrases:

• "Replacement Cost on Dwelling" — good. The carrier will pay full RCV, in two checks. We explain the timing in our piece on RCV vs ACV.
• "Actual Cash Value" or "ACV settlement only" — that is what you get, period. No second check after the work is done.
• "Roof endorsement" or "roof depreciation schedule" — read this one carefully. Some carriers added these endorsements in the last five years that quietly converted RCV roofs to ACV at a certain age, usually 10 or 15 years.

Code upgrade rider — easy to miss, easy to lose money on

Look for a line called Ordinance or Law or Code Upgrade. This is an optional add-on that pays for code-required upgrades that did not exist when your house was built.

Why this matters in NC: the state adopted updated roofing codes in 2018 and again in 2024. If you have a 1995 house with a basic policy and no code rider, the carrier will pay to put back the same roof you had — even if current code requires drip edge, ice-and-water shield in the eaves, six-nail-pattern fastening, or specific underlayment that was not on your original roof.

With a code rider, the carrier pays the difference. Without it, you either pay out of pocket or skip code requirements (which a reputable roofer will not do). Adding the rider at renewal usually costs $25 to $75 a year.

Recoverable depreciation — read the fine print

Most RCV policies say "recoverable depreciation," meaning the depreciation amount comes back to you when the work is completed. A small number of policies — typically the cheapest tier sold by big-name carriers — say "non-recoverable depreciation," which means whatever the carrier holds back, you never see again.

On a $20,000 RCV roof with $4,000 in depreciation, the difference between recoverable and non-recoverable is exactly $4,000 in your pocket. Worth checking.

Endorsements: where the money is hiding

Your dec page lists endorsements — the small print add-ons that modify your basic policy. Look for these specifically when storm season approaches:

• Matching siding/roofing endorsement. If five shingles get hit on one slope and the rest of the roof cannot be matched, this endorsement pays to replace the full slope or roof. Without it, carriers can pay for five shingles and call it done.
• Service line coverage. Underground water, sewer, or electrical lines from the street to the house. Not a storm thing, but homeowners often discover it after a tree root issue.
• Equipment breakdown. Sometimes covers AC condenser coils that hail crushed. Worth asking your adjuster about even when you think it does not apply.

What to do with all of this

Once you know what your dec page says, you know what to expect from a claim. We have a simple way to read it:

1. If your dec page says RCV + recoverable + code rider, a fully approved claim should pay close to the actual cost of a new roof, in two checks, with the only out-of-pocket being your deductible.
2. If your dec page says ACV only, expect one check for RCV minus depreciation minus deductible. You make up the difference yourself or scope down the work.
3. If your dec page is silent on a code rider and the house is older than 10 years, expect a partial gap between what the carrier pays and what code now requires. We document the gap as a supplement when we can.

On a free inspection, we ask homeowners to email us the dec page before we show up. We mark it up with a pen and bring the marked copy to the kitchen table. It is the fastest way to set realistic expectations before a claim is filed.

If you want a second set of eyes on yours, send it over. Email us a copy of the dec page and we will read it back to you, plain English. Or learn more about how we handle insurance claims.