Reading a property's coverage history

See what has actually happened to a property's insurance — claims paid, non-renewals, carrier changes and premium moves — so you're weighing a record of events, not only a prediction.

Who this is for: Home Buyers, Agents, Brokers and Lenders. Where: the Coverage history section of any property Record (/properties/...), near the top — just below Risk profile. Time: ~3 min.

New here? Do Getting started first (signup, terms, navigation).

Why this matters

A risk score tells you how hard a property is to insure right now. It cannot tell you that the last carrier walked away, that a wind claim paid out two years ago, or that the premium jumped by half at the most recent renewal. Those are events, not estimates — and they are the part of a Record that a seller cannot argue with.

Before you bid, they change the question from "what might this cost?" to "what has this property already done to the people who insured it?"

Before you start

• You need to be signed in. Coverage history is only ever shown to signed-in viewers of a property — it is never on a public page or a shared badge, because it can be sensitive to the people involved.
• Nothing else. The history itself is included on every plan; only the two "Today" figures (the premium estimate and how many carriers are writing) sit on a paid plan.

How to read it

1. Open any property Record and find Coverage history near the top, just under Risk profile — or use the Coverage history link in the Contents rail beside the Record.
2. Read the note at the top first. It tells you what we have observed and since when — the boundary of what this timeline can tell you.
3. Look at Today: how many carriers are writing here now, the current premium estimate, and any recent moves in this market.
4. Work down the events. They run newest first, each with its date, the carrier involved, the money, and a line saying where the fact came from.

What you'll see / What it means

Every event says how strongly it is evidenced. That line under each event is the most important thing on it:

We do not mark anything "independently verified" unless a document actually sits behind it. If a line says a broker reported it, that is exactly what happened.

An empty timeline is not a clean record. This is the single most important thing to understand here. When you see "Nothing observed yet", it means we have not observed anything since we started watching this property — not that nothing has happened. An event we have not seen is not an event we can rule out. Treat an empty history as an open question to ask about, never as reassurance.

A non-renewal is two different facts, and we never mix them up. "Carrier left this market" says nothing about the house — the carrier stopped writing across the whole area. "Non-renewed for this property" says a great deal, because the carrier kept writing nearby and chose to stop here. Read which one it says.

"N independent reports" is good news about the fact, not a duplicate. It means more than one source told us the same thing separately, which makes the event more reliable, not less.

Premium moves show the before and after, not just a percentage. You can always check the change against the two amounts yourself.

"Today" is the market now, not this property's past. Those figures describe what is available in this area today. The premium is a modeled estimate — decision support, not a binding quote or an appraisal.

"Too few to describe" and "none reported" are different answers, and Today says which. Under the figures you may see one of two lines about reported policies in the area, and they mean opposite things:

• "Policies are reported in this area, but too few for us to describe them..." — there is a market here. We hold real reports for this ZIP, just not enough of them to publish an average without risking pointing at one household. Nothing about this is a warning.
• "No premiums have been reported to CoverGuard for other homes in this area in the past year." — none of the neighbours has told us what they pay recently. That is a fact about us, not about the neighbourhood: plenty of homes in a ZIP can be insured without anyone reporting a premium to us. Note other homes — anything you reported for this property is excluded from the neighbourhood figure on purpose, so your own entry never counts as a neighbour.

If neither line appears, that is not a statement about the area either way: either we held enough reports for this ZIP that there was nothing to explain, or the area check did not resolve on this view. We will not guess between them for you. The Today figures above are a separate question — if those read "Upgrade to see this", that is your plan, not a gap in the data.

It travels with your own downloaded report — and with nothing else

When you download the property report as a PDF and you have no company branding set up, the coverage timeline comes with it: the same events in the same order, each with the date, the carrier, the money, and the line saying how strongly it is evidenced. If the timeline is empty, the document says so in the same words the page does — that we have observed nothing, not that nothing has happened. There is no switch for it, because it is part of the Record rather than an optional section.

Three things deliberately do not carry it:

• A branded report you send to a client. That is the document CoverGuard stores and

gives you a shareable link for — it is built to be handed on, and once it leaves we cannot control where it goes, so it never carries coverage events at any scope, including ones you recorded yourself.

• Your own download, once you have set up branding. The moment a company name, logo

or brand colour is saved on your account, your downloads carry them and are signed "Prepared by ‹your company› via CoverGuard" — which is what they are for. A document that looks like yours and is meant for a client is one you will hand over, and we cannot take it back afterwards. A timeline can include events other brokers contributed, so it stays out of anything shaped to be passed on. The rest of the report is unaffected.

• A public Record link. Same reason, and covered in [Sharing a Record

publicly](/help/guides/workflows/sharing-a-record-publicly).

To read the history, open the Record on screen — it is always there for you, branding or not.

Your own notes stay on screen. The document prints the facts of each event — the date, what happened, the carrier, the money, and how strongly it is evidenced — and not the written note you added. That is deliberate, and it is the same rule that drops your note when you contribute an event to the shared timeline: a note is where a previous owner's name or a disputed claim tends to end up, and a file you can forward is not the place for it. Your notes are still there whenever you open the Record.

The Today figures — the premium estimate and the carrier count — are not repeated in the PDF's timeline either. They are already in that document's own Insurance cost estimate and Active carriers sections, so the timeline there is the property's history and the sections above it are its present.

Tips

• A history that is thin is still a question worth asking. Bring the gaps to the listing agent: "has this property had a non-renewal?" is a fair question, and a Record that cannot answer it is a reason to ask, not to assume.
• A market exit and a risk-specific non-renewal need different follow-ups. The first means shopping the market; the second means asking what about the property caused it and whether it has been fixed.
• Brokers: your own entries stay yours. Anything you record about a property is private to you until you explicitly choose to contribute it to the shared timeline — see Book of business.
• A seller can add their own history. If you are listing, the pre-listing disclosure flow is where you state coverage facts you know — see Disclosure sharing.

Troubleshooting / Common questions

• "There's no Coverage history section on this Record." → You are probably not signed in, or you are viewing a public shared link. Sign in and open the property from your own account.
• "It says coverage history isn't available on this environment." → That is a setup state on the site you are using, not a statement about the property. Nothing is being hidden from you.
• "Why won't you show me the reported premiums for this area?" → If the line says the reports are too few to describe, we hold real ones but not enough to publish an average without risking identifying whoever reported them. We will not lower that bar. If it says no premiums have been reported in the past year, we have nothing recent to average — and neither line is a judgement about the homes there, or about whether they are insured.
• "Two 'Today' figures say they're on a paid plan." → The premium estimate and the carrier count are included on a paid plan; the timeline itself is not gated. See /pricing.
• "Why does the public link I shared not show this?" → By design. See Sharing a Record publicly.
• "The timeline is on my downloaded PDF but not on the branded report I sent a client." → Also by design, and for the same reason as the public link: a branded report is built to be handed on, so it carries no coverage events at all. Your own download is not — it goes to you, and it shows you what you already see on the Record.
• "My downloaded PDF has no Coverage history section at all." → First check whether you have company branding set up — a name, logo or colour on your account makes every download a client-facing document, and those never carry coverage events (see above). If you have none, the section is left out rather than printed empty, precisely so a blank one is never mistaken for a clean record — but "left out" does not tell you which of three things happened: the site you are using may not be set up for coverage history yet, the timeline may not have loaded while the document was being built, or your plan may not include it. Check the Record on screen, which does distinguish them: if the timeline is there, download again; if it says coverage history isn't available on this environment, that is the setup state and not a statement about the property.

Do this next

Ask the listing agent about anything the timeline leaves open — especially if it is empty — then price the property with what you learn.

• Reading a CoverGuard Record
• Sharing a Record publicly
• Requesting a quote