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Your goal: see your home the way a buyer will — its flood, fire, wind and crime risk, its risk-adjusted value, and which carriers actually write it — before you list, so insurance never surprises your sale.
New to CoverGuard? Do Getting started first (signup, terms, navigation). This guide is your first-week playbook as a seller.
Who this is for
You own a home and you're preparing to sell or list it. A buyer (and their lender) will pull an insurability and hazard picture of your home during due diligence — this gets you that same picture first, so you can price, position, and answer questions with confidence instead of getting caught out at the insurance step.
What your workspace looks like
As a Seller you get the same lean, consumer-friendly set of tabs a buyer does — it's the same core data, read from the other side of the transaction:
- Search — look up your home (or any address).
- Property — your saved homes and Records.
- Agents — your out-of-the-box CoverGuard Agents, included and on by default: put a home-watch agent on your listing so you're alerted the moment its risk or carrier availability shifts. Pause, retune, or add your own anytime.
- Toolkit — calculators and lookups: mortgage (to model a buyer's payment), property tax, HOA, schools, walkability, insurance side-by-side, inspection checklist, and more.
Plus the CoverGuard Advisor on the right of every page. You won't see the professional CRM, deals pipeline, or client tools — those are for agents, mortgage pros, and insurance brokers.
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 your home the way a buyer will
Go to Search, type your address, and read the Record top to bottom. Focus on:
- Your CoverGuard Score at the top, with What a buyer will find right beneath it.
- Which carriers are binding and their indicative premium — proof coverage is available.
- Insurability — is this an easy place to insure, or a hard one?
Full walkthrough: Reading a CoverGuard Record.
2. See how risk moves your home's value
The Record's risk-adjusted valuation shows how hazard exposure and insurability pressure move your home's value — the same lens a buyer's lender will apply. Use it to price and position the listing with real numbers. You'll find it leading your Record's Cost & coverage section, with a short tip beside it; the full explanation is in Reading a home's risk-adjusted value.
Beside your CoverGuard Score your Record's summary also shows a buyer's modeled cost to insure your home each month (an estimate, not a quote), and how many points your fixes could add to the score.
3. Fix what a buyer will notice, then share with buyers
Your Record's Next steps open with the three fixes that would most improve how insurable your home looks to a buyer. Each one shows:
- How many points it could add to your score (out of 10). A fix that moves the score by less than a whole point says "Less than a point on its own" — the score moves in whole points, so we won't round a fraction up into a promise.
- What it's likely to cost, as a range.
Every figure is a modeled estimate, not a contractor's quote. If your home doesn't have a published score yet (for example, no insurer we checked will write it, or there isn't enough hazard data), the fixes and their costs are still listed — just without points.
Then comes one action: Share with buyers, which gives you a public link to your Record framed for a buyer — the score, the perils and how current it is, without your street address, coverage history or premium. See Sharing a Record publicly. If no insurer we checked will write the home, your first step is Get advice before you list instead.
On the free Record the fix list is locked — you'll see Fixes for buyers with a line saying what's inside, and a paid plan or a single-property purchase opens it.
4. Work through your pre-listing checklist
Open the Record's Checklists section (its own tab on a phone). At the top is your Pre-listing checklist (modeled estimate) — built for this home from its flood, fire, wind and earthquake risk, not a one-size-fits-all list. A home with high flood risk, for example, gets Obtain elevation certificate and Investigate LOMA/LOMR eligibility; a high-wildfire home gets defensible-space and ember-resistant-vent items. Every home also gets the paperwork a buyer will ask for: claims history, your current policy's declarations page, and a risk disclosure statement.
Each item shows its priority, a likely cost as a range, and how long it usually takes. Like the fixes above, the costs and timeframes are modeled estimates, not contractor quotes. Tick an item off as you finish it — your progress saves to your account straight away and is still there next time you open the Record. The bar at the top shows how many items are done and how many high-priority ones are left.
The general inspection, buyer and agent checklists sit underneath if you want them too.
5. Record your current home & policy
In the Toolkit (the "My Current Home & Insurance" tool) or Account → My Home, enter your home and current hazard policy — you can upload the declarations page as a PDF and let the AI extract the fields. Now you can track your carrying cost while the home is listed and give a buyer a concrete insurance figure when they ask.
6. Save your home and let an agent watch it
Save your home to your watchlist, then activate a home-watch CoverGuard Agent (on the Agents tab) so you're alerted if its flood zone, wildfire tier, or carrier availability shifts while it's on the market. See Saving & comparing and CoverGuard Agents.
7. Get your listing talking points from the Advisor
Ask the CoverGuard Advisor "How do I explain this flood zone to a buyer?" or "What's the strongest insurability point about my home?" and get plain-English talking points grounded in your Record. On a property's Record it also offers three one-tap 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. Until you've asked it something, the Advisor shows a short tip on what it can do. See CoverGuard Advisor.
Free tier limits
Free accounts get 1 property search and 5 AI interactions lifetime — enough to run your own home once and try the Advisor. To re-check as the market moves, use the calculators freely, and activate agents, upgrade on /pricing. If you hit a cap you'll see a proactive usage prompt.
Tips
- Lead with insurability. "Coverage is available here, from these carriers" is a selling point — surface it before a buyer's financing stalls at insurance.
- The numbers are decision support, not a binding quote. They carry a "Modeled estimate" basis; confirm final terms with a carrier.
- Take a Record to buyers or your agent — share a Record link so everyone's working from the same picture. Snapshot share links stay live for 90 days.
Common seller questions
See Search & Records troubleshooting and Billing & plans. Quick hits:
- "No carriers showed up for my home." — The area may be genuinely hard to place, or risk data is still computing. Re-check in a moment and read the insurability note — it's better to know now than at closing.
- "Premiums say 'Modeled estimate'." — That's expected: they're modeled from risk data, not a live carrier feed. Use them to set expectations, not as a final bill.
- "My pre-listing checklist only has the paperwork items." — The home-specific items come from its risk profile. If its flood, fire, wind and earthquake risk all read low, or the risk data hadn't finished when the checklist was first made, you'll see just the documentation and insurance-readiness items.
- "I used up my free search." — Free tier is 1 search lifetime; upgrade to continue. Home Seller Pro is $4.99/month (5 full Records a month, risk-adjusted valuation, shareable disclosure reports). See
/pricing. - "My Record stopped showing insurance costs and the valuation." — Home Seller Pro includes 5 full Records each calendar month (each distinct property you pull counts once — re-opening a property you already pulled this month is always free and stays a full Record). Past 5 new properties, additional Records show the free preview until your allowance resets on the 1st.
Do this next
Run your own home through Search and read its Record top to bottom — that's the fastest way to know what a buyer will find, and to fix or explain it before you list.