Your goal: know whether a home is insurable — and what coverage will cost — before you make an offer, then request a quote from a carrier that's actually writing.
New to CoverGuard? Do Getting started first (signup, terms, navigation). This guide is your first-week playbook as a buyer.
What your workspace looks like
As a Buyer you get a lean, consumer-friendly set of tabs:
- Search — look up any address.
- Shop by budget — set a price + insurance budget, see homes that fit.
- Property — your saved homes and reports.
- Automations — your out-of-the-box AI Agents, included and on by default to watch
your saved homes and coverage — pause, retune, or add your own anytime.
- Toolkit — buyer calculators: mortgage, affordability, closing costs, property
tax, HOA, schools, walkability, insurance side-by-side, and more.
Plus the AI Advisor on the right of every page.
Your first week
1. Check a property you're considering
Go to Search, type an address, and read the report. Focus on:
- Overall risk + cost to insure at the top.
- Which carriers are binding and their indicative premium.
- Insurability — is this an easy place to insure, or a hard one?
Full walkthrough: Reading a property report.
2. Save the homes you're weighing
Click the star / Save on any property to keep it. Add notes and tags. Saved homes appear under Property. See Saving & comparing.
3. Compare your finalists side by side
Toggle Compare on up to 3 properties, then open the compare view to see risk, cost, carriers, and valuation lined up column-by-column. (Side-by-side comparison is a Professional-tier feature — the Compare button prompts an upgrade on the free plan.)
4. Record your current home & insurance (optional but powerful)
In the Toolkit (or the "My Current Home & Insurance" tool), enter your existing home address and current hazard policy — you can even upload your policy documents (declarations page, endorsements, a wind-mitigation cert) as PDFs or images. Attach more than one; the first is used to let the AI auto-fill the premium, coverage, and carrier for you. Uploads are stored privately and only viewable by you through a short-lived secure link. Now every new home you check is compared against what you already pay.
5. Model the real monthly payment
Open the Mortgage calculator (Toolkit → Mortgage Payment Calculator, or /toolkit/mortgage-calculator). Unlike other calculators, the insurance line is modeled per peril by the same engine your report uses — so your PITI is realistic, not a flat guess. Save scenarios to compare. See Mortgage calculator.
6. Shop by budget instead of one address at a time
In the Search tab, open the Search By Budget tab to invert the search: tell CoverGuard your home-price ceiling, your monthly (or annual) insurance-premium ceiling, and the area, and get back a list of homes that fit both budgets, each with a modeled premium. See Shop by budget.
7. Request a quote when you're ready
On a property you like, open Request a quote to send a binding-quote request to an active carrier. See Requesting a binding quote.
Free tier limits
Free buyers get 1 property search and 5 AI interactions lifetime. That's enough to try it on a real home. To check more homes, use the calculators freely, and request quotes, upgrade on /pricing. If you hit a cap you'll see a proactive usage prompt.
Tips
- Ask the Advisor things like "Is this flood risk a dealbreaker?" or *"Which of
my saved homes is cheapest to insure?"* — it can reason across your saved homes.
- Take a report home — share a report link with your agent or lender to talk it
through. Snapshot share links stay live for 90 days.
- The numbers are decision support, not a binding quote. Confirm final terms with
the carrier before closing.
Common buyer questions
See Search & reports troubleshooting and Billing & plans. Quick hits:
- "No carriers showed up." — The area may be genuinely hard to place, or risk data
is still computing. Re-check in a moment and read the insurability note.
- "Premiums say 'Modeled estimate'." — That's expected: they're modeled from risk
data, not a live carrier feed. Use them to compare homes, not as a final bill.
- "I used up my free search." — Free tier is 1 search lifetime; upgrade to continue.
Do this next
Check the one home you're most serious about and read its report top to bottom — that's the fastest way to know if it's a smart bid.