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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 Records.
- Agents — your out-of-the-box CoverGuard 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, a home warranty cost estimator, and more.
Plus the CoverGuard Advisor on the right of every page.
Your CoverGuard agent is already working
The moment you sign up, CoverGuard starts a free CoverGuard agent for you — no setup required. If you haven't searched or saved a property yet, it's waiting for your first one; check your address or save a home and it queues its first pass automatically. You'll see an honest status note on your dashboard ("we'll start your free risk check as soon as you search for or save a home" → "your agent is queued and will start working on your first risk check soon") — it only ever says what's actually happened, never a false in-progress claim. This is separate from the out-of-the-box agents on the Agents tab (which you turn on yourself); this one is automatic and included from day one.
Your first week
"Do next" adapts to where you are. While you're still getting set up it leads with the one setup step that unlocks the most — running your first property check, then the others in order. Once you're up and running it switches to live alerts on its own. You never have to configure it, and it never leaves you with nothing: when genuinely nothing needs you, it says so and offers a property to check.
1. Check a property you're considering
Go to Search, type an address, and read the Record. Focus on:
- Your CoverGuard Score at the top, with What this means for you right beneath it.
- Which carriers are binding and their indicative premium.
- Insurability — is this an easy place to insure, or a hard one?
Full walkthrough: Reading a CoverGuard Record.
Right after you sign up (or as soon as you check or save your first property, if you don't have one at signup), a "Your CoverGuard Buyer Agent" card appears on your dashboard — a small automated helper that starts working on your behalf, no setup needed. Early on it may just say it's waiting for your first property; once it has one it says it's reviewing it for you. It's a preview of a fuller capability still being built — worth knowing about, not something to wait on before checking a property yourself.
In the buyer preview? If CoverGuard has added you to the preview, an At a glance band sits under the score with three answers, always in the same places:
- Risk — how hazardous the area is and the two perils behind it. It's shown so you know it; it isn't part of the score.
- Can you insure it — a plain sentence (for example, This home can be insured), how many insurers answered, how sure we are and the date, and roughly how long cover takes to put in place. If there are things to do first, tap the cell to list them.
- What it costs — the cover you're required to carry, a month, with any recommended cover shown separately and never added in. Underneath is an estimate of what you'd pay yourself on a claim: a storm deductible written as a percentage is turned into dollars, such as Estimated: in a hurricane you pay the first $24,450. It's a modeled estimate, not a quote — the insurer confirms the real deductible. If no insurer will cover the home, it says so instead of a price.
The score sits beneath them as a 1–10 figure, marked Preview.
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 comes with the professional Pro plans, such as Agent Pro — it isn't part of Free or Home Buyer Pro, and the Compare button prompts an upgrade.)
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 Record 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 quote request to CoverGuard's brokerage team, which works with licensed insurance partners to take it to the market for you. Nothing is bound or priced when you submit. Quote requests are included in Home Buyer Pro. See Requesting a 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
- Tap a suggested question on a Record. When you open a property's Record, the Advisor offers three questions about that exact home — whether it can be insured, what the required cover costs (a modeled estimate), and your best next step, once the Record has loaded.
- 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. Until you've asked it something, opening it shows a short tip on what it can do; dismiss the tip and it stays gone on every device.
- Take a Record home — share a Record 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 & Records 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. Home Buyer Pro is $4.99/month (5 full Records a month, insurance cost estimates, 25 saved homes). See
/pricing. - "My Record stopped showing insurance costs and carriers." — Home Buyer Pro includes 5 full Records each calendar month (each distinct home you pull counts once — re-opening a home you already pulled this month is always free and stays a full Record). Past 5 new homes, additional Records show the free preview until your allowance resets on the 1st.
Do this next
Check the one home you're most serious about and read its Record top to bottom — that's the fastest way to know if it's a smart bid.